Maddox Corner

Sex Ed: 1965

2010-10-06T15:54:00.002-04:00

I'm 13. I'll be 14 at the end of the year. I think about girls a lot more than I used to. A lot more. I don't do anything about it, mind you, it's all just thinking. The female body has become a lot more interesting. I notice I pay more attention to things like the swimsuit competition during the Miss America pageant.
I know next to nothing about girls, and I know absolutely nothing about sex. I know someone is supposed to have a long talk with me about the birds and the bees one of these days, but who will it be, my father? My father finds it hard to express any emotions, so I doubt he'll be the one to tell me about sex.
I hear we'll have some kind of sex education in school some day. I can't imagine what that will be like. Guys laugh out loud in class when the word bird or cock is read aloud, what are they going to be like if we're in a classroom and the teacher actually uses the word penis?
What will sex ed. be like I wonder? Will they give us kissing lessons using one of those CPR type dummies?
How are they going to explain it to us?
Will it be with diagrams like when I make a model airplane? Insert penis (A) into female vaginal opening (B), and commence thrusting and gyrating?
How is a teacher going to explain all that to us and not get embarrassed?
How will the teacher keep us all from laughing?
There are guys in gym class who cover up their genitals when we shower, how are they gonna react? I bet they pass right out.
I want to know. I need to learn this stuff if I'm ever gonna have the confidence to ask a girl out on a date.
I just wish I knew who was gonna tell me about it.
Maybe they could explain these dreams I'm having and what happens to me after I've had them.
I'm going through a lot of underwear.
Man, this becoming a teenager isn't easy, you know?

Writer's block

2010-05-31T11:08:00.001-04:00

I know, I haven't written anything in a long, long time.
Something's coming I just don't know when.
I've been doing public readings of the blog and they have been very well received. I'll be reading again in June, and I hope to write some more as well.
Writer's block be gone!
Stay tuned.

Spring Fever

2010-04-24T10:30:00.003-04:00

Spring is here and I'm counting the days until summer vacation. I can't wait for this first year at Gateway Regional High School to be over. No more gym class or industrial arts, and I certainly won't miss the cafeteria.
It has been a tough year, getting used to a new routine, new classmates and teachers. I'm looking forward to a few months of not worrying about whether or not I remembered to bring my gym bag or if my book covers need replacing.
I'm getting good grades at Gateway, but I don't feel comfortable in this school yet. You don't really get to know your teachers very well since you don't spend all day with them, just "periods" in the schedule. There are several kids I'd like to be better friends with, but they live in other towns, and we're all only thirteen, so it's hard to see each other.
I don't even see many of my former classmates from Woodbury Heights, either. Mostly Steve Kay and Vince Fitzgerald. Sometimes I'll play baseball with Paul LaPann and Billy Hills and some of the other guys from the Heights, but mostly just Steve and the younger kids who live in my neighborhood.
The news seems to get worse. The civil rights movement and the war over in Vietnam; violence on the TV every night. I still worry that the Russians might start a war over something in East Berlin again, and India and China seem to want to start something as well.
I lay awake at night thinking about all this stuff, and I don't want to. It makes me nervous. I wonder why I don't have the nerve to ask girls out on a date, even though I'm attracted to a lot of them. I don't see a lot of the girls from Woodbury Heights in my classes now. I meet a lot of new girls. Sue Parker and Linda Williams. Jill Springer and Marilyn Wernig. Hard to get used to not seeing Joyce or Sheila or Judy.
Despite the fact that I don't date anyone or even ask anyone to date me, I think a lot about girls now. They look different, that's for sure. The girls' bodies seem to be developing faster than the boys, you know? They're looking less and less like little kids and more and more like young women. I'm not sure, but I think I'll miss being around these girls over the summer. Maybe if I mow a lot of lawns and ride my bike or play war with Steve a lot I won't think about them so much.
I'm thinking about the class trip that's coming up. I can't wait for that. The school is taking us to the World's Fair in New York, and I've been there several times already, and I just can't wait to get there again.
Such promise for the future is there. So many amazing things to see. A lot of my classmates haven't been there yet, so I can have fun being a guide to the place. This will be a great trip, a chance to forget about the world blowing up, a chance to see the future again. It will be a great way to end the school year.
We've got final exams coming up, and the Bookmobile will come again, and I'll get a chance to buy a lot of paperbacks about history. The Bookmobile is one of my favorite things about high school. Books on wheels, and they come to you! I've never seen so many books about all the different wars throughout history. It's a dream come true for me. I love the smell inside the Bookmobile too. Reminds me of the way the newsstand in Woodbury smells. Wood pulp and ink, the aroma is intoxicating to me.
Just a few more weeks now and the school year will be over and the summer can't come quick enough for me. Tests and more tests, and then the World's Fair and freedom!
Maybe if we're lucky the world will calm down for a while, you know?
Just for the summer maybe?

Differences

2010-04-22T10:32:00.002-04:00

It's hard to understand, this civil rights stuff, all this black against white. For years now I've watched people getting beaten, knocked down by fire hoses, attacked by police dogs and I've seen the bodies of those who have been murdered on the evening news. White people who marched along with the black people have also been killed and beaten, and I tell you I don't understand. Do my classmates understand any of this? Our school is all white except for one. Just one dark face in this sea of white. A girl from Wenonah - Michelle Smith is her name, and I don't know her. She's in the Seventh Grade like I am but she's not in any of my classes, so I don't ever have much of a chance to talk to her.
Michelle's mother is Irene Smith, one of the leaders of the local NAACP, and I've heard she was responsible for stopping the minstrel shows that used to be put on in the Heights. When people mention Mrs. Smith's name in Woodbury Heights, they seem to spit it out, and you can feel their anger.
I don't know if Michelle Smith is treated poorly here in Gateway Regional High School, but there must be some kids that don't want her here.
What must it be like, I wonder, to be the only black kid in the school?
Does she get threatening notes from other kids? Do the girls talk to her, or do they shun her? I don't hear anything, but then again I pretty much keep to myself, and I'm not part of any group, so what do I know?
It's got to be scary, I think, with all this racial hatred going on and you're the only one who's "different".
This is South Jersey not Alabama, but the hatred is there. I've heard all the words and the jokes, and we don't socialize with the black families who live across the street from us even though they are our neighbors.
Every now and then there are stories in the newspapers about crosses being burned on the lawns of black families, or the letters KKK painted on their houses and their churches, but the stories say it's just people playing bad practical jokes, that the Ku Klux Klan isn't really responsible.
This is South Jersey not Mississippi, but there are no black kids swimming in the Woodbury Heights lake in the summer, not yet, not in 1965.
It is something I do not understand, this hatred, this black against white, and yet I'm a part of it, we're all a part of it here in Gateway Regional High School.
Most of us don't pay much attention to it really, even though it's always in the news.
But there is one of us who knows.
Just one dark face in this sea of white.

On The Defensive

2010-04-03T10:21:00.004-04:00

President Johnson had said that the United States was not seeking a wider war in Vietnam. We would only be advising the South Vietnamese army, training their soldiers and providing artillery and air support in their war not a war with the Communists in the north.
More and more American "advisers" were sent to Vietnam in 1964. They get killed no matter what we call them.
In January of 1965 President Johnson sent more American planes to Vietnam in order to help defend the South Vietnamese. Purely defensive the government tells us. We must prevent the Communists from toppling all the other nations of South-East Asia. If we don't they will fall like a row of dominoes.
Here in March of 1965 I watch United States Marines walking ashore in South Vietnam. Three thousand, five hundred United States Marines. They are touted as the first American combat troops to enter South Vietnam. I am confused by this. Aren't the Green Berets combat troops? The pilots and the soldiers and sailors who are protecting South Vietnam - aren't they combat troops. I guess not. I guess they are just teachers in this war not a war.
Ho-Chi Minh, leader of the Communists in North Vietnam asks us if we want to make war like the French, and if so he and the North Vietnamese will make war for twenty years or more if that's what we want. He says that he does not want to topple the other nations in South-East Asia like a row of dominoes, and if America would like to make peace he would make peace.
It is complicated, this war not a war. The North Vietnamese claim they just want to unify the country, and our government claims they want to take over the world just like all Communists want to do.
So we will send in the Marines, like we always do.
"Yeah," I think, the Marines.
This war won't last much longer now.

Blood In Alabama

2010-04-03T09:54:00.003-04:00

More violence on the evening news. More people killed. The black citizens of Alabama are marching on Selma. A voters' rights march. What do we understand about it, all of us here in Gateway Regional High School? A story on the evening news.
March 8, 1965.
We've seen this before.
Tear gas.
Police on horses.
Protesters, black and white,
Beaten
Bloody
Attacked by police.
George Wallace
Defiant
Denying black Americans
The rights they are entitled to.
March 9, 1965
We see it all again.
Beatings
Blood
White ministers attacked
By the good ol' boys.
James Reeb, a white minister
Dead
More violence on the evening news
A terrible story to be sure,
But we have book reports to finish
Looking forward to Easter.
The civil rights movement
Does not falter
Dr. King will continue
the march
from Selma to
Montgomery, Alabama.
Despite George Wallace
And the Ku Klux Klan
And police with clubs.
March 21, 1965
On the highway they march
Black and white
Protected by the army
And the National Guard.
Four days later
They rally in Montgomery, Alabama.
Songs of freedom sung
And Dr. King asks,
"How long?"
Later that night
Viola Liuzzo, mother of five
White mother of five
Detroit mother of five
Shot to death
Driving marchers
To and from the rally.
Viola Liuzzo
Shot to death
Another terrible story
On the evening news.
But I've got a book report
And Easter is coming
After all.

Just Because?

2010-03-26T11:21:00.003-04:00

Malcolm X was shot the other day. Lots of white people were afraid of Malcolm X, hated Malcolm X, they did not like his ideas. I don’t know much about him really. I had seen him on the news talking about how black Americans needed to defend themselves by any means necessary and that black people should form their own country because all white people were devils. That kind of talk really scared white people like my father and my relatives and my neighbors. Another black man hated for his ideas.

It’s early in the year, this year of 1965. I’m watching something on the news that I’ve seen before. I’m watching black Americans marching in the streets down in the south. The black people down south are marching because they cannot vote, eat in a restaurant, ride a bus or go to school. Every school day I and all of the students at Gateway Regional High School stand and pledge allegiance to one nation, with liberty and justice for all. We stand as one, believing the things we pledge to and sing to. These are things I take for granted, these are things we all have a right to, don’t we?

I don’t understand this hatred any more. Why must men like Martin Luther King lead protest marches? Why do men like my father hate black people so much? I guess it’s easy for him to be afraid. From what I’ve seen on the news and in Life Magazine, there’s so much to be afraid of. I’ve watched Americans, black and white, fighting in the streets. I’ve seen black people beaten, attacked by police dogs, knocked down by fire hoses, and I’ve seen little girls blown up in church.

On the TV and in the papers I've seen black and white Americans killed by people who didn't like their ideas.

I don’t feel this hatred. One of my earliest friends was a black girl and I didn’t worry about the color of her skin rubbing off on mine if we touched – didn’t think I’d get cooties from her if we drank from the same glass.

Malcolm X sounded like he had the same kind of hatred for white people that my father and other white people had for him and Dr. King and every other black person in America. It’s been said that after he took a trip to Africa that Malcolm X might have changed some of his ideas, and that other black Muslims didn’t like what he was saying now. Malcolm X was shot to death - shot to death by black men who didn’t agree with him.

Americans killing other Americans because of their ideas.

Lack of Posts

2010-02-16T15:11:00.002-05:00

Yes I know, I haven't been posting for a long time and I keep promising to.
Ideas are forming. More to come, so stay tuned if you haven't given up.

Curse words, nocturnal emissions, racism, Vietnam, scary adults on alcohol, a swimming pool in the back yard, Gateway Regional High School.

It's in my brain waiting to come out.

We Can't Lose

2010-01-03T10:40:00.003-05:00

Up until now the war that was going on in Vietnam wasn't considered a war, at least not for our country. American soldiers were over there, but officially they were just there to train and advise the South Vietnamese army; to help them beat the communists from the north.
But now here in March of 1965 I see on the news and in Life Magazine that American Marines are landing there. Over three thousand marines walking ashore. Real combat troops. I guess we're not just policemen and teachers anymore. I suppose I'll be reading about great battles and sweeping marches and jungle warfare in the papers now.
I can't imagine those Viet Cong guys in their black pajamas standing up to United States Marines.
Marines, aircraft carriers and jet fighters, American artillery all backing up the government of South Vietnam. There's no way the communists will be able to win now.
President Johnson said last year that he wasn't seeking a wider war in Vietnam. He's only sending a few thousand so I guess that means the war should be over quickly.
Just a few thousand marines - that's all it should take.
Yeah, this war should be over soon.

Mystic Revelations

2009-12-30T11:23:00.002-05:00

In the spring of 1965, around Easter, my mother decided that I should be baptized. My sister was going to be christened, so she figured to have a multiple ceremony which would include me, my brother Carl, Dad and Cheryl all together.
I couldn't figure this out. It didn't make any sense to me since I had stopped going to church altogether and I had made it quite clear to my mother that I didn't really believe in all of this god stuff. I guess she didn't take me seriously. Maybe she figured that if I had some of that magical holy water splashed on me that I'd see the light or something. I had a vague recollection of Dad going to church once or twice, but he was almost always working on Sunday, so he wasn't really a church-going man at all. Carl didn't care one way or the other, but I'm sure he'd rather stay in bed on Sunday morning, and little Cheryl is only two-and-a-half, so she doesn't get anything to say about it.
I never liked church or Sunday School. I didn't see the point of it all. To me these were interesting stories, but they were just as fantastic and as unbelievable as the super heroes in all of the comic books I read.
Rising from the dead, making miracles, getting swallowed by whales and destroying cities by blowing horns all sounded good, but come on, did they really think I'd believe all of that stuff?
I could learn just as much watching Davey and Goliath on TV, and I could stay in my pajamas.
I was always trying to be a good person and I didn't get into trouble much and my grades were good in school, so why did I have to give up a perfectly good Sunday morning just to listen to people telling me why I should be good? I mean, I already had that covered, you know?
I don't talk about religion to anyone. It seems if you tell people you don't believe in it that they don't take too kindly to you. We don't have a national religion in our country, it says so in our Constitution you know. We used to have to pray in school. It was a Christian prayer, and everyone was forced to say it no matter what they believed. We're supposed to be a country where everyone is free to believe what they like, so I say leave me alone when it comes to religion.
Maybe if we could be christened like the black Baptists from Jericho did it, I'd be more interested. They get together and stand in the lake down the street and sing songs and then you get dunked under the water. They always look like they're having a good time.
We have to get dressed up in our best clothes and go over to the Presbyterian Church on Elm Avenue and stand there while the minister prays or something, and then he's going to drop some water on our foreheads. Big deal.
What is this going to do, give me some sort of Christian force field or something? Will it make me a better person?
After it's all over I don't feel any different. I don't "see the light" or anything like that. I'd rather go home and get into my dungarees and a T-shirt, but no, we have to go around to all of the relatives now and tell them we're all official Christians now.
I guess this makes Mom feel better. I guess she thinks we're protected now or that we'll have a better chance of getting into heaven now that we've been watered.
I doubt it. My brother could still care less, and my little sister really doesn't know what's going on. My bet is that Dad will still stay away from church as much as possible, and there's no way I'm going, so I still don't see the point of it all.
So, keep the faith if you have to.
I'm doing fine by me.

Just Getting By

2009-12-28T10:08:00.002-05:00

Soon it will be 1965. 1964 was a mixed bag for me. The first half of the year I was still in Sixth Grade, still with my friends from Woodbury Heights and getting a little more confident. I was looking forward to the Seventh Grade until I learned that we'd be going to a new school with kids from three other towns. I never took to drastic changes very well. I preferred the familiar, and I would have liked two more years in Woodbury Heights Elementary School, being one of the older kids, sitting at the top of the roost.
Now I've got to go back to Gateway Regional High School. Six years maneuvering my way through those halls, avoiding the tough guys, anticipating the chocolate pudding and fruit cups being hurled my way in the cafeteria.
I dread gym class days. Recurring nightmares about forgetting my gym suit - humiliated by Mr. Williamson in front of the other guys in class. I hate gym class and yearn for the days of recess, plain and simple.
I did get to go to the World's Fair several times. Such a wonderful place, such promise for the future. I'm hoping everything I saw and learned there comes true. A world at peace filled with marvelous machines that will make life easier and more fulfilling for us all. Wouldn't that be something?
I'm getting good grades in my first year at Gateway, but I'm not having an easy time of it. I struggle at Math. I sweat out every test, the numbers swirling around in my brain. I excel whenever I have to stand in front of a class to give a book report or talk about history. I love public speaking, something which seems to scare the living daylights out of the others.
I'm not a popular person. I lack confidence in myself when it comes to the girls. I consider myself goofy-looking, a kind of Jerry Lewis in miniature, and it doesn't help to be practically the only boy left with this awful crew-cut hair.
I'm not tall or handsome like guys like Paul Albright. I don't join any of the athletic teams but I play sports all the time with kids after school. That's why I'm so skinny. I'm always running or riding my bike. I play football with Butch and Billy Clay and my brother and other kids. Whenever Paul LaPann, Billy Hills, Jim Matsuk and others ask me to join them at the old school for a game of basketball, I go. I'm not very good at it, but I play my best, even though they pretty much laugh at my efforts.
My best friend is still Steve Kay from Woodbury Heights. He and I play Avalon Hill war games and we still play with our Airfix toy soldiers down in his basement. Every once in a while Jack Wiler from Wenonah joins in with us when he can get a ride home.
I like Jack. He and I share a love of Marvel comic books and we talk about history a lot. Guys like Jack and Gary Lundquist are the type of boys I like to hang around with. They seem to know more about current affairs than I do, and I know they've read more books than me, so I strive to learn more and to read more so I can keep up with them.
It's a weird feeling going to Gateway Regional High School. I'm in Woodbury Heights but it doesn't feel like I'm a part of Woodbury Heights. It feels maybe like being in Berlin, you know? Like I'm in a separate zone peering over the wall or something. It's hard to explain but it's uncomfortable.
Six more years of this?
I hope it goes by quickly.

I'll have a blue Christmas in 1964

2009-12-26T16:40:00.003-05:00

It was difficult to get excited about Christmas. My Nanny Gardner had died the night before Thanksgiving, so that was a somber holiday for all of us. Now that Christmas is upon us I'm missing her presence even more. It's odd for me to go to her house now. Pop-Pop is still there, and soon Uncle Pat and Aunt Irene along with their kids Janet and Patti, will be moving in with him, but it's strange that it won't be Nanny's house any more.
Nanny's little dog Tippy does not take her death well either. She hides under Nanny's bed and won't come out for days. My mother finally coaxes her out, but she's not the same dog any longer. Tippy broods and cowers. She trembles when you try to pet her, and finally she begins snapping at everyone. Tippy gets more and more withdrawn and her temperament worsens. Eventually she is put to sleep.
I didn't go to Nanny's funeral. I just couldn't face looking at her dead body lying in a coffin. I stayed home from school that day, but no one and I mean no one could drag me to her funeral.
I ask for things for Christmas like I normally do. Some Airfix toy soldiers, the Afrika Korps board game from Avalon Hill and yes, I do ask for a G.I. Joe. Doesn't really matter to me anyhow. I'm not in a very festive mood.
Dad doesn't help matters very much. His choice of Christmas trees usually isn't very good, and this year he brings home the worst one yet. This thing doesn't even look like a tree it looks more like some hideous shrub, even more scraggly than ever. Mom and I decorate it but that doesn't help, it seems to emphasize its ugliness.
The only consolation for me is that I can escape Gateway Regional High School for a while, and hopefully it will snow over the holiday and I can lose myself in the thrill of sledding down Freund's Cliff. It's pretty cold on Christmas Eve so maybe there's a chance of some snow in our future.
No such luck. I wake up Christmas morning and find out it's almost sixty degrees outside. It feels like spring more than winter. The unusually warm weather makes the whole holiday seem ridiculous, and I feel like I should be playing baseball rather than singing about winter wonderlands.
The warm air sticks around for several days and even then it doesn't get really cold until almost New Years'. We get some rain mixed with wet snow, but that just makes things more miserable. It's gray and rainy on New Year's day too, so I'm tortured by the Mummers parade on TV. I have to retreat upstairs to my room and my piles of comic books, losing myself in the adventures of Spider Man and the X-Men and others.
This is not my favorite Christmas, not by a long shot.
Nanny's dead, our tree is ugly and the weather just stinks.
Who ever thought I'd look forward to getting back to school?

Thanksgiving: 1964

2009-12-11T19:58:00.004-05:00

My grandmother, my Mom's mother, who we all called Nanny, died. She died the night before Thanksgiving. She wasn't sick as far as I knew - she just died. Nanny seemed to know it, at least according to the grownups, because I heard them talking about how Nanny had gone shopping during the day and bought a goose to cook. "I don't know why I bought the damn thing," Nanny said, "I won't be alive to cook it." Sure enough, that evening she died.
The only death that had affected me up till now was when my dog Whee-Zee had to be put to sleep last year. I'm still upset about that, and now my Nanny has died. Death is hard to cope with. Our family won't be the same without Nanny Gardner.
No more food tricks. Nanny tried to fool you into eating and drinking things under assumed names. She would cook liver and try to con you into thinking it was steak.
She never got me with that one. I could always tell by the smell that it was liver, but she never stopped trying, never gave up the game.
A glass of Tang was orange juice, and a corn fritter was a pancake, but didn't she know we could tell the difference?
The worst thing she tried to pass off on us was A-Toast. A-Toast is a syrup that you mix with water - it's supposed to taste like Coca-Cola or Pepsi, but it doesn't. It tastes more like soda that's been sitting in a glass all night and now there's no fizz left. The stuff is made in Burlington County, and some people claim they like it. They put seltzer water or club soda in it and then they swear it tastes just like Coke or Pepsi, but to me the stuff is just plain horrible. Still, Nanny would keep trying to pull a fast one with it.
Nanny was eccentric. She was my fun grandmother, the one I liked to visit because it was always fun to go to her house.
Nanny belched. She belched real loud and didn't apologize for it.
Nanny had a blue Parakeet named Billy. Billy had the run of the house: oh, he had a cage, but Nanny left the door open for him so he could fly all around the house.
She had a yellow Canary too, but it was always kept in its cage.

No more Nanny Gardner?

When we go over to Nanny's house the day after Thanksgiving the place seems empty. There's a stillness to it that's never been there before. The big cuckoo clock in the kitchen sounds louder; there's an echo that I never noticed before. It's all too quiet.
Nanny's little terrier Tippy sits in her dog bed shivering. There's a deep sadness in her eyes. She can sense that Nanny is gone and doesn't know what to do except sit in her bed and shake with grief.
The big cuckoo clock tick-tocks louder and louder.
Nanny's not here to try and fool me or to give me candy mint leaves or lemon slices.
Tippy keeps shivering.
The clock keeps ticking.
There's no joy here anymore.
That clock keeps ticking.
I pet little Tippy and try to make her feel better.
She just shivers and looks even sadder.
There will be a funeral-Nanny's funeral.
I make up my mind that I will not go look at Nanny lying in a coffin.
No, I will not do that. I will not say good bye.
I'm going to be thirteen in a month, I'm supposed to be grown up now.
Grown up? What does that mean at a time like this?
I don't know enough to feel grown up, I don't know enough to help me cope with death.

Well,grown up or not I do know one thing: I miss my Nanny Gardner.

November 1964

2009-11-19T09:36:00.002-05:00

The warmth of the October Indian Summer gave way to the dreary damp and gray skies of November. Lyndon Johnson was elected our new president. There seems to be a lot of people who don't like Lyndon Johnson. During the campaign it was claimed that he was a corrupt politician who was guilty of fixing elections in Texas, and now some people are saying he knows something about the murder of President Kennedy. What do I know of it? I'm only twelve years old and I'm trying to deal with pimples and becoming a teenager and all that.
I am kinda glad that Barry Goldwater wasn't elected. He scares me. He's got a stern look about him and he seems unconcerned about dropping bombs on the Communists. During the election campaign Mr. Goldwater said a lot of things about using force in order to defend freedom, so he seems pretty much like a warmonger.
Our new president, Lyndon Johnson, sounds like he wants to make our country better. He talks about ending poverty and giving medical care to senior citizens when they retire, and he seems like he wants to try and put a stop to racism. His opponents call him a "socialist" and a "communist", but in my mind it seems like he's trying to help all Americans. President Johnson has also said that he will continue to support the government of South Vietnam against the Communists. A lot of people are angry about that. I don't know if it's right or wrong, but I've been taught to be a true-blue American, so I guess it's the right thing to do. More and more people in our country and around the world are starting to say that we should get out of Vietnam; that it's none of our business, but shouldn't we be fighting the communists? It's all so complicated.
I'm watching the TV and there's lots of stuff about the Kennedy assassination. It's been a year since the president was shot, and just like then it seems that's all that's on TV right now. I think I've had enough of it. It doesn't seem real, you know? There's a lot of talk about Lee Harvey Oswald and that maybe he was part of a plot to kill President Kennedy; that maybe it was Castro or the Mafia or even the CIA that plotted to kill him. All it does is confuse me. I don't want to hear about death right now. It's time to think about Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I've got to get through my thirteenth birthday and becoming a teenager and all.
Christmas! What do I ask for now that I'm going to be thirteen? Do I stop asking for toys now? I'd like to get that G.I. Joe soldier, but it feels like I'd be asking for a doll. I will ask for some Airfix toy soldiers to reinforce my Afika Korps army for my battles with Steve Kay down in his basement. I guess I'll ask for that Monopoly game too. That seems like what an older kid would ask for. My brother wants spy stuff. The James Bond briefcase or the Man From UNCLE one. I hope he gets them - then I can play with them too.
I guess we'll be going to Aunt Bette's farm for Thanksgiving again. Almost all of my Mom's side of the family gathers there every year for a great big dinner. We'll fill up the kitchen and spill out into the dining room, and all of us cousins will play hide and seek in the barns. But....

It's the day before Thanksgiving and the phone rings. My Mom is talking on the phone and she sounds worried and serious.
Something's wrong.
It's something about Nanny, my grandmother, Mom's mother.
I think she's very sick or something, and Mom says she's got to go to Woodbury and see what's wrong. Mrs. Olsen and Mrs. Avis will keep an eye on us until she gets back or until Dad gets home from work.
Nanny - sick?
No, not Nanny, she can't be sick. I know she's very old and all, but she's the center of our family, nothing can happen to her, can it?
I don't like this feeling I'm having.
No nothing bad can happen, can it?
I'm standing in my hallway, looking out through the picture window in the living room. Mom is driving away looking really worried.
No, I don't like this feeling.
I don't like it at all.

Awkward in Autumn-1964

2009-11-05T19:36:00.006-05:00

It's weird, this autumn of 1964. I'm trying to cope with going to this new school, this Gateway Regional High School. My body is going crazy, with pimples bursting through my skin, and my scalp flaking off, and now I'm going to be thirteen in a few months. Thirteen! Me, a teenager? Today I am a man and all that crap? I don't feel ready. I mean, I'd like to get one of those G.I. Joe action toys for Christmas, but if I'm going to be a teenager should I be asking for a doll for Christmas? I tell myself that it's not a doll, it's a large toy soldier that you can change uniforms and equipment on, but hey that IS a DOLL, isn't it? I'm gonna want one and I know some people will feel it's stupid and I'll feel it's stupid, but I'll probably ask for one anyway.

It's October and like most Octobers the Yankees are in the World Series again. This year I'm more interested in baseball than ever before. I understand the game more and I can play it better, and this summer was pretty exciting watching the Phillies almost win the pennant. It's a shame they blew it, but it's pretty much what people have come to expect from them. Still it would have been pretty cool watching the Phils play the Yankees. Dad probably would have gotten tickets to some of the games. I could have seen Mickey Mantle play ball in person, right across the Delaware River. Instead I rush home at the end of the school day to catch the last innings. The St. Louis Cardinals are making things tough for the Yanks. The series goes to seven games and I'm disappointed when the Cardinals win. What's really weird is after the Series is over the Yankees fire their manager, Yogi Berra and hire Johnny Keane, the guy who managed the Cardinals! A strange way to end things, that's for sure.

It's a strange feeling I have this autumn in 1964, like I'm living in two different worlds. I live in Woodbury Heights, and my friends are my neighbors from Woodbury Heights, but when I go to school my friends are mostly from Wenonah and Westville and National Park. But they're only my friends at school, we hardly ever see each other outside the walls of Gateway.

The world is strange too in this autumn of 1964. The presidential election is between two scary looking men, Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater. A lot of people say Lyndon Johnson is a crooked politician who fixed elections in Texas, and Barry Goldwater seems to be someone who's determined to start a nuclear war with Russia. Even if I could vote I don't think I'd pick either one.

This October more East Germans tunneled their way under the Berlin Wall to get to West Germany and freedom. I still can't understand it all. I can't imagine what it's like to be a kid in East Germany, wondering if I'd ever be able to be free again. What do those kids ask for at Christmas?

I decide I'm not going out for Halloween this year. That's one thing I think I'm too old for now. I'm gonna stay home and hand out the candy and try and guess who is under those costumes. Mom can take little Cheryl out trick-or-treating, I'll stay home and hold down the fort.

My grades are good and I make the honor roll. I have to study harder and it seems like there's no end to the homework our teachers hand out, but somehow I get through it all.

Soon the election will be over and we'll have a new president. A big Thanksgiving dinner at Aunt Bette's farm,and then thoughts of Christmas. And yeah, I'm going to ask for a G.I. Joe, doll or no doll.

I don't want to think about my thirteenth birthday too much.
I don't need another pimple.

Woodbury Heights

2009-10-23T23:41:00.005-04:00

This is a map of Woodbury Heights as it is today, but pretty much as it was in 1964 as well. Find the streets I talk about in my other posts. My house is at the corner of Walnut Ave. and Tanyard Road, with Gateway Regional High School right behind it. You can see my walk to school changed dramatically. The elementary school is on Academy Ave. where Asam Ave. meets it. St. Margaret's is all the way over on Second Street, off of Central Ave..
Freund's Cliff is behind the former TYCO site.
Double click on the map to enlarge.

Stay Tuned

2009-10-23T11:43:00.002-04:00

For those of you waiting, if there are any, more posts will be coming shortly.
Heading towards the end of 1964 and my thirteenth birthday. I'm going to try and tackle some hard issues, and I hope I'm up to the challenge.

For those of you who venture over to Jack Wiler's World, I must tell you that Jack passed away on October 20 of this year.

I will miss my old friend. I will miss his inspiration. I shall try and rise to his challenge - to write hard and write true.

Stay tuned.
More Maddox Corner to come.

A Short Note

2009-09-14T23:49:00.001-04:00

I haven't been posting lately. Family matters and personal situations have taken priority. If you're still reading and would like to see more, I hope to be back soon.
Stay tuned.

A Random Act

2009-08-18T17:54:00.006-04:00

The late summer/early fall of 1964 proved to be sunny and warm. I and all of my Woodbury Heights classmates and the kids from three other towns were getting used to our new high school in the fields behind my home.
Most of the guys I used to play with were becoming more interested in playing sports on the Gateway teams, so I didn't see much of them on the weekends now. In the past, Steve Kay and I and Paul LaPann and Billy Hills and lots of others would be fighting the battles of one war or another, chasing each other through the woods and fields all over town.
It was harder for Steve and I to get any of our former classmates to join in. I can't explain our fascination for playing war, except to say that we were comfortable in our imaginations. Whether charging across the grounds of the Episcopal Church or using the garage in the Clay's yard as the Alamo, it was an exciting way to spend a Saturday or Sunday afternoon.
We delighted in making gun, aircraft and artillery sounds. Steve and I could spend hours in his basement moving German and British soldiers across the miniature desert, most likely driving his mother to distraction with all of our noise.
Steve had also introduced me to the world of Avalon Hill games, war games played out on large folding boards representing the terrain of some of the most famous battles in history. You moved little cardboard squares representing infantry, armor artillery and motorized units. Combat was resolved using dice: the outcome determined by the roll, the strength of the units, and charts that would tell you the results. The first game was called Tactics II, pitting the blue army against the red. Once you mastered this game you were ready for the more advanced and "realistic" campaigns like Afrika Korps and Gettysburg. For military history freaks like me, this was Nirvana. Here I was commanding the actual units that fought at Tobruk and Cemetery Ridge. I could play those games all day and never tire of them.
But there was to be one last battle with our old comrades, one last hurrah on the fields of honor - well, Steve's back yard.
Steve had somehow convinced Paul and his brothers Joe and Dave to join in the war with us one bright sunny day in late September or early October. There was Steve and his brothers Howe and David and me and a few others.
It didn't matter to me what battle we'd play out, Paul was with us even if it was to be one last time.
We charged and yelled and died on the steps of the Episcopal Church, our battle flags flying. Charge and counter charge and the occasional argument over whether or not you were really shot by someone and had to fall down. We screamed and died and made our best battle sounds, whirling and shouting throughout the afternoon.
The battle was drawing to a close with one side holed up in the small wooden shed behind Steve's house. The shed was assaulted time and again with each charge repulsed by its determined defenders. One last effort was made and the door was breached, and the attackers moved in, pushing the defenders into the walls of the shed. The wall moved under the stress of all those young bodies, and a large cracking noise could be heard.
It was a spontaneous move by all of us. We got caught up in some sort of hysteria and we all began to hurl ourselves at the wall of the shed, once, then again and again, until the wall had broken free and toppled onto the ground. We repeated this action over and over, bashing our bodies into the small structure, until nothing was left standing. We stood panting and sweating, surveying the results of our savagery. There was no longer a shed, just a wooden floor and a pile of boards. We laughed embarrassed laughs, amazed at the damage we had done. Some scurried away, not wanting to wait around to see what Steve's parents would have to say about all this.
Father Kay did not yell at us, which made us feel even worse about what we had done. No, he was cool and calm in his lecture to us with just enough edge in his voice to let us know how disappointed he was in our behavior. The shed would have to be put back together, and it would be some time before any battles could take place on the grounds of the Episcopal Church again.
We put the shed back together.
Steve and his brothers were grounded for quite some time.
None of us could ever explain why we did it.
Such senseless violence in the middle of our war.

Study Time

2009-08-12T08:42:00.004-04:00

There were days during the week that you were given free time to catch up on your homework, or to read a book, or just sit there and vegetate. These moments were called Study Hall. A grand notion, a generous gift-time to do homework in school so you could be free to pursue other interests after the bell to go home had rung.
The only problem was, the places they picked for us to "study".
I had Study Hall in the auditorium of all places. Sitting in auditorium seats without a surface to write on, so your biggest book or your three ring binder became a desk top. If the subject you had homework in was in your biggest book, well then you might be out of luck. There was no place else to put the rest of your books and other stuff you might be carrying. Oh, you could try and place them on the seat next to you, but it would keep trying to close up on you, or your books would slide down to the floor. It was a juggling act. We looked like the Three Stooges at an informal dinner party, trying to balance plates on our knees.
The lighting was dim to non-existent, and most of the time my pen or pencil would pop through my paper from the lack of a proper hard surface to write on. My papers would be sliding out from under me, and those slippery book covers meant the occasional avalanche of text books sliding under the seats in front of you.
You could tell that teachers did not appreciate having to do Study Hall duty. They approached it with an air of resentment, that "I don't want to be here any more than you do" attitude. They patrolled the Study Hall like prison guards, looking for any signs of conversation and prodding those just sitting there to do something constructive. As if sitting in a semi-dark cavern that's too cold from the air-conditioning without proper seating was conducive to scholarly endeavors.
The cafeteria wasn't much better, but sometimes there I was sitting at one of those long tables jammed in with the rest of my classmates, shoulder to shoulder. The lighting was better, but there wasn't a lot of room if you needed to spread out, and the wardens were there to keep us all in line.
I tried. I tried to do my homework in Study Hall, but it was next to impossible for me, so I just perfected the art of looking busy. I could stare at a book with the best of them, or just doodle for the entire hour or so, looking like I was deep in thought.
There were the rebellious among us. A defiant sneer at the teacher when told they should be doing something, or an out and out protest, usually resulting in them being sent out of the room, something they wanted anyway.
For the vast majority of us, we kept our heads down buried in our books.
That is, if we could keep them from falling to the floor.

Book Covers And Other Junk

2009-08-04T21:57:00.002-04:00

Seventh Grade moves slowly. I’m forging new friendships and trying to hold on to the old. Steve Kay and I are in 7C, the only boys from our former Sixth Grade class in Woodbury Heights. Vince Fitzgerald is in 7C as well, but he was in the “other” Sixth Grade, and didn’t share all of our experiences.
I miss the cloakroom. My locker combination doesn’t always work, so I have to bang the door just under the lock sometimes before it will open. I don’t have much that someone would want to steal. My jacket? My school books? Once in a while my gym bag? I didn’t have to worry about thieves in Woodbury Heights Elementary. I guess with more kids there’s more temptation.
Our teachers are obsessed with book covers. Some of them are rabid about it. All of the textbooks are brand new, and they want us to keep them that way. Remember to cover your books, they remind us. Some of them demand that we buy the “official” Gateway book covers and not use the paper bag covers our mothers make for us. The Gateway book covers are blue and white of course, with the Gator logo in a kind of laminated glossy paper. I prefer the home-made paper bag cover myself. They provide you with an empty canvas on which to doodle. Mine are usually covered with my “art work” by the middle of the year and a bit worn so I have to get my Mom to make some new ones. The Gateway covers are slippery which makes it hard to hold onto your books. They slide out of the racks under my desks if I’m not careful. Stacking your books under your seat is a daily juggling act I could do without.
There are other official obsessions.
The dress code for one. No blue jeans or shorts. Boys must wear shirts with collars-no t-shirts whatsoever. The girls must wear skirts and blouses or dresses. They can’t wear slacks. They can get away with wearing coullottes, which is a skirt that looks like a pair of shorts. We cannot have long hair like the Beatles or the Beach Boys, and every boy must be clean-shaven. Beards and mustaches are forbidden. Not too many of us can grow them quite yet anyway.
Are the girls’ gym teachers obsessed with them wearing their gym clothes the way Mr. Williamson is? Whatever you do, don’t forget your jockstrap or your white socks. I have nightmares about gym days. I dream that I’ve forgotten my gym bag and Williamson is having a ball humiliating me in front of the whole class. Do the girls have to endure this kind of nonsense?
The gym is finished and we run in circles in our half. There’s this pull-out wall separating the girls from the boys. This seems ridiculous after years of recess and lunch time on the playground. It was always boys and girls together, but now that we’re older they don’t want us to mingle. What is on the minds of our school board anyway?
When the sports season begins we have pep rallies. We’re supposed to whip ourselves into some sort of school spirit frenzy, all of us one mind and body united in hatred for the schools our teams will be playing. I feel weird going to pep rallies. They remind me of the newsreels of the Nuremberg rallies the Nazis used to have. We’re encouraged to scream and yell and worship our guys like they’re some sort of Olympic gods or something. I don’t want to be there, but I have to be. Inside I laugh at the spectacle.
I don’t consider myself a “Gator” yet. I don’t know what I am but I know I’m not a blue reptile that swims in a swamp.
Some days of the week they separate the boys and the girls for the special classes. Industrial Arts for the boys and Home Economics for the girls. Only boys want to be carpenters or mechanics or architects don’t you know? Only girls want to learn how to cook and to sew. It’s 1964 outside, but it might as well be 1954 in the building. No one asked me.
The shops aren’t finished yet so we spend most of our time watching films about how engines work and about shop safety. We have Mechanical Drawing using T-squares and funny – looking triangular rulers. This is precision three-dimensional drawing, displaying the sizes and angles. I have trouble getting the arrowheads on my dimension lines correct, but on the whole I like Mechanical Drawing and the discipline it encourages. I would like to know how to cook, though. Chef Boy-ar-dee had to learn somewhere, didn’t he?
I’m not enjoying Gateway Regional High School, at least not yet. My grades are good and I’ve got my best friend Steve Kay in my class, but it’s not the same as Woodbury Heights Elementary. I wonder how the kids from the other towns feel? How are they making out getting up earlier and waiting for buses to ship them off miles away from home.
At least I don’t have to ride a bus every day.
I’d hate to have to ride one of those damn things.
Wait a second- did I just say damn?
Now where did that come from?

Body Language

2009-07-30T17:42:00.001-04:00

My body is going crazy on me. There’s this struggle going on. The Maddox genes are fighting with the Boswell genes and they’re mixing it up with the Gardner genes who are trying to hold off the Knoll genes. I don’t know who I look like anymore. I’ve got bigger lips and my head looks longer. My face is erupting with acne and I’ve got hair above my upper lip, and my voice is changing. I’ve always looked a bit geeky, a bit like Jerry Lewis with this perpetual crew cut, but now I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not getting any taller like I figured, I’m still about five-foot-five. OK so maybe I’m five-foot-five and-a-half, but I’m not sprouting up like a lot of guys my age.
I’m skinny. Real skinny. I’m skinny ‘cause I never stop running or riding my bike or playing war over in Steve Kay’s yard. I’m always outside doing something, so I don’t have time to get fat. I do notice that I’m able to do those exercises in gym class a lot easier than I did when Mr. Williamson first started on us, and my arms and legs feel stronger. There’s not a lot of muscles on me, but I definitely feel stronger.
I got up one morning and looked in the mirror and I realized I had to start shaving. The hair above my upper lip was noticeable, a dark shadow beneath my nose. At first I used Dad’s electric shaver, but that never felt like it did the job, so I switch to a safety razor. I have to be careful not to cut myself or open up one of the pimples forming beneath my mustache. Mustache? I didn’t think it would come this quickly. As I’m scraping the hair from my upper lip I notice the fuzz on my cheeks is getting darker too. Pretty soon I’ll be shaving my whole face. Why do I need all this extra hair anyway? I don’t live in a cave somewhere. My legs are sprouting more hair too. What is this?
My scalp is dry. If I scratch my head I can cover a school book with a layer of white scales. I’ve got more dandruff than I know what to do with. This is just great, blotchy skin and mounds of dandruff and a face that’s changing shape. This is all I need. I’ll never get up the courage to talk to any girl I like now.
In my mind the eruptions on my face are gigantic, like I’ve got a volley ball-sized growth popping out of my nose. My brow is all red and bumpy, and why do pimples have to form right where I have to shave? This is painful. This is embarrassing. This is insane.
Hairy, bumpy, skinny and crew cut, and dandruff. I don’t need this at all.
I’ve got enough self-esteem issues without my body going wacky on me.
I’ll scrub my face and shampoo my hair. I’ll rub and rub and rub till my skin and scalp are raw, but it doesn’t do any good; my face erupts and my skin flakes off. In my mind I’m hideous and I wish I could wear a mask to school.
Yeah, I’ve heard about it, how your body goes through changes as you get older, but my body is going crazy and it’s driving me nuts!
How can I keep going to school looking like this?
I’m not even thirteen.
What’s going to happen to me then?
No, I don't need this.
I don't need this at all.

Changing Channels

2009-07-29T09:45:00.000-04:00

The new school year also means the arrival of the latest television season. TV is starting to pull away from the 1950s a little more this year. Westerns don’t dominate the schedule like they used to. Most of the cowboy shows are called “adult” westerns, and most of them are an hour long. I think Rawhide is on mainly because people like the theme song, and why anyone would want to watch The Virginian is beyond me. Gunsmoke is still on Saturday nights and I never miss that. Marshall Dillon and the folks in Dodge City are old familiar friends.
My brother likes the Outer Limits. That show creeps me out, especially the beginning where they tell you they’re in control of your TV set, and that loud noise is buzzing in my ears. I go downstairs and watch something else when that’s on. The one time I do decide to stick around and watch it, it has these alien creatures that look like big ants that have human faces. Too weird for me. I don’t know how Carl can sleep after watching stuff like that.
Carl likes this new Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea show too. The actors in it seem phony to me, and the special effects and everything else about it looks cheesy. I’m not going to watch that one either.
Ozzie and Harriet are still on. Can you believe that? Dave and Ricky are all grown up and Ozzie still walks around in a sweater without any visible means of support. I guess he’s retired now, but from what? This year they show mostly re-runs of the older episodes, so it’s not quite as embarrassing as it has been. But why is it still on?
A lot of the older comedians are still on, but Red Skelton and Jack Benny are still funny. Lucy on the other hand, is not, and I don’t see why she’s still on, but for some reason or another she’s still popular. I don’t get it. Watching an old lady throw temper tantrums isn’t funny to me anymore, it’s just stupid.
There are several new shows on that are about people who are different. I like Bewitched. This guy marries a real pretty girl who turns out to be a witch. The only thing that bothers me about this show is that this guy doesn’t want his wife to use her powers. He wants her to be “normal”. Now everybody knows if you were married to somebody who had magical powers, you’d be asking them to do all kinds of neat stuff. TV always has to teach us a moral, like we’re always going to Sunday school or something.
There’s two more shows about people who are “different”. Two families trying to get along in the world even though their lifestyles don’t exactly fit in. They look different from everybody else too. The Munsters and the Addams family are really funny. What it would be like if the Frankenstein monster was living in a small town, or if an alternate world of ghouls and witches and other assorted freaks of nature moved in next door. The Addams family has an edge to them. Gomez and Morticia seem like they could get a kick out of doing something evil, and no one wants to mess with Lurch. I don’t like the actors who play their kids, though, especially that boy who plays Pugsley. He’s just plain awful.
I love the Munsters. Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis were on my favorite show of all time-Car 54, Where Are You?, and they’re great as Herman and Grandpa Munster. Fred Gwynne is all rubber-faced and goofy as Herman. I don’t think any other actor could play Herman and be as funny as Fred Gwynne. The Munsters is my favorite show this year.
TV has finally realized that there’s a new generation watching. Shindig is on on Wednesday nights at 8:30. It’s a live half hour show featuring all of the new rock n’ roll bands and they actually perform their hit songs instead of lip singing them. Every big group with a hit record is on the show, even the Beatles. The only rocker not on is Elvis, but he doesn’t seem as popular anymore. The Beatles are number one, and Diana Ross and the Supremes have a lot of hit records this year too. Elvis is taking a back seat to the British bands and the groups from Motown. I don’t watch Shindig too much ‘cause it’s on when the Beverly Hillbillies are, but I hear a lot of kids talking about it.
Carl is watching The Man From Uncle. It’s a spy show with a lot of gadgets and car chases. I guess it’s on because of that James Bond guy. I don’t like Robert Vaughn too much. I’d rather watch McHale’s Navy or Red Skelton.
There’s a lot of new shows on that I’m going to try. Twelve O’clock High, another World War II show about the B-17 bomber crews. I saw the movie with Gregory Peck, and I love watching war shows, so that will be on my schedule.
Donna Reed is still on, and so is My Three Sons, but they’ve pretty much worn out their welcome, and why oh why is Hazel still on? Can somebody tell me why that horrible show is still on?
Another show that catches my attention is a comedy show. It’s a lot of political satire and jokes about what’s going on today. It’s got that British guy David Frost on it. The show is called That Was The Week That Was, or TW3, and it’s pretty funny, but they keep pre-empting it for programs about the election, so most of the time I forget it’s on.
There is a show on that’s not very good, but I like it anyway. It’s the perfect show for young boys like me. The show is called My Living Doll, and it’s on Sunday night at 9:30. Robert Cummings is a guy who’s put in charge of an experimental robot. The thing is the robot is a beautiful woman, and she’s been programmed to do anything you tell her to do. The robot is played by Julie Newmar, one of the prettiest and sexiest women on TV at the time. I have to watch it every week just to look at Julie Newmar. Bob Cummings calls the robot Rhoda, and you operate Rhoda by pressing the freckles on her back! This show is the answer to every 12 and 13 year old boy with raging hormones dream. I know that every boy who watches this show is waiting for the day when Rhoda is told to take her clothes off. We know in our minds that this will never happen on TV, but we can dream, can’t we?
Who knows? Remember that Tarzan movie I saw? The one where Jane swims totally naked under water?
I saw that on TV now, didn’t I?

School Daze

2009-07-27T11:45:00.001-04:00

I think the people who planned Gateway Regional High School are messing with our heads. They’ve taken kids from four different towns and thrown us all together in one building in some kind of bizarre science experiment. I feel like a lab rat in a maze, passing hundreds of strangers and every once in a while I see a familiar face but I can’t stop to say hi, I’ve got to keep moving and find the next classroom before the bell rings. Every hour or so it’s a race against time, rush-rush-rush, and don’t be late-don’t stop or take a time out to pee.
There are a few teachers I recognize. There’s Mr. Harvey and Mr. Culbertson from Woodbury Heights. I would have had them in Seventh or Eighth Grade if we had stayed in our old elementary school, but here I just see them going by me in the hall. Sometimes they smile and nod, acknowledging my existence. Fate has been kind to me as far as Language Arts and Social Studies. I get Mrs. Oglesby. Mrs. Oglesby lives six houses down from me on Walnut Avenue. She’s my neighbor! I passed her house every day on the way to school, and she knows my Mom and every Halloween I’ve stood in her living room while she tried to guess who I was. It’s good to have at least one familiar person as one of my teachers. There seem to be teachers from all four towns sprinkled in among us. I see some kids know Mrs. Conaway, my Homeroom and Reading class teacher. There are just enough teachers that we know to keep us all from getting too nervous about this place.
I and my classmates in 7C are expected to learn French. Why French, I wonder? How practical is French going to be for me? Who I am going to speak French to after school? German might be good, seeing as how my grandmother came from Austria, but French? Maybe if I lived near Canada or New Orleans French might be a good thing to know, but I live in South Jersey. There’s a lot of Italians in South Jersey, and Puerto Ricans, too, so maybe French isn’t the right way for us to go.
We spend a lot of time asking each other where the library is and introducing ourselves in French class. Miss Viola is our teacher, and she’s nice enough and pretty young and all, but maybe she could teach us more practical things to say. How about, “Where’s the bathroom?” or “Do you like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones?” Instead we practice introductions and tell each other we’re having sausages to eat, and how many times do we have to ask where the library is anyway? What is it with all these different ways to say the? Masculine, feminine and neuter? I never knew words could have a gender! Different endings for the same word, and there’s a formal way and an informal way to talk to each other. Hey, I’ve been speaking English for all my life, how do they expect me to understand all of this?
Miss Viola gives everyone the French equivalent of their first name. Except me. There is no French word for James, and John Camp already got Jean, which is the only thing close. Jack Wiler gets Jacques, the next best thing, so I have to settle for Pierre. Pierre? Why can’t she call me Louis? Louis is French, and that’s my middle name, but no, I have to settle for Pierre. If you ask me, this French class is a lot of merd.
Gym class is really tough. Mr. Williamson drills us like soldiers and then makes us do exercises until I feel like my veins are going to pop. Squats until my legs feel like over-stretched rubber bands. I’m in the push-up position, holding myself on my arms and toes as my arms wobble and the sweat is pouring into my eyes. Jumping jacks that last forever and we touch our toes until I feel like I’m going to pass out. Every once in a while somebody forgets their white socks or their jock strap, and Mr. Williamson reams them out in front of everybody like they’ve just committed some sort of mortal sin or something. The guys you feel most sorry for are the ones who forget to bring their gym suit to school that day. Mr. Williamson yells at them and makes them sit on the sidelines and watch us exercise, and ridicules them all throughout the period. I’m beginning to hate gym class.
I’m making some new friends in Gateway, but how friendly can you get with kids that live miles away and can only get here by bus? The guys from Wenonah are the closest, but it’s complicated if you want to hang out together. Your Mom has to drive you back and forth, or you can ride your bike, but you can’t be too close ‘cause you’re just so far away from each other.
Classes aren’t the same either. You don’t spend all day with the same teacher teaching you everything, and you don’t feel close to any of them. I like some of my teachers, and there's some I don’t care for. I guess I’m like everyone else, just muddling through, just trying to make it through the day.
I never used to watch the clock too much in Woodbury Heights Elementary School, but I stare at it every last period now. I can’t wait for the final bell. I’ve got a short walk home, so I’m there faster than anyone else.
Every day I take a quick nap after school. I rush upstairs and collapse on my bed and drift away. Thirty to forty minutes of bliss.
Free to let my muscles and my mind relax
Free to forget where the library is in France.

The Phold

2009-07-26T22:55:00.004-04:00

I didn’t know much about the Phillies until this year. I did know that the last time they had been in the World Series was 1950, a year before I was born, and the only other time was 1915, and both times they had been beaten.
This year, 1964, it was a different Phillies team altogether. They had been in first place most of the season, and now in September it looked like they were going to be the National League champions for sure. We all talked about it in school.
The Phillies were a young team, led by veteran outfielder Johnny Callison, revered by Phillies fans as much as Mickey Mantle was by Yankees fans in New York. My neighbors Butch and Billy Clay talked about how great Johnny Callison was all of the time. From what I had read in the Bulletin, they were right. Johnny Callison was hitting a ton of homers and he played an almost flawless right field. Yeah, the Phillies had a star in Johnny Callison alright.
The main thing that was different about the 1964 Phillies wasn’t just the players’ ages. They actually had a team that was made up of guys who were black, white and most of all, they had quite a few Latin-American ballplayers.

(left to right)Cookie Rojas, Johnny Callison, Richie Allen, Gene Mauch

There was a player who looked like he would be a superstar as well, and for the first time in the Phillies’ history, he was black.
Richie Allen was having a great year, and the Philadelphia papers and newscasts were all touting him as candidate for Rookie of the Year for the National League. He wasn’t the greatest third baseman, that’s for sure, but he was clobbering the ball. Allen was hitting for average, driving in runs, and blasting out just as many home runs as Johnny Callison. It was pretty amazing listening to white kids praising a black baseball player, especially a Phillie, but it was happening, right here, right now.
The Spanish-speaking players were fan favorites as well. Tony Gonzalez was one of the best center fielders in baseball, and little Cookie Rojas was proving that utility players were just as valuable as the regular guys. He was hitting the ball well too, batting close to .300 for most of the season.
Phillies fans weren’t used to success. It was expected that they’d lose every year. My father and all our neighbors never thought in a million years that the Phillies would stay in first place almost all summer long, but here they were on September 20th with a six and a half game lead and just twelve games left to go. All they have to do is win six games, that’s all. Just six games and the championship would be theirs.
But something happened. Some Phillies fans probably said it was bound to happen. Things began to unravel, and we saw it on TV and listened to it on the radio.
On September 21st the Phils lost a 1-0 game to the Reds because a utility infielder named Chico Ruiz decided to do the unexpected. He stole home plate all on his own. He just did it, surprising his manager and his teammates as much as he surprised the Phillies. From that night on and for nine more games, the Phillies just couldn’t win no matter how hard they tried.
They began making a lot of errors and balls that seemed routine would suddenly take a bad hop or hit a rock, and before they knew it, the other team was way ahead. It seemed like everyone stopped hitting except for Allen and Callison, and they couldn’t be expected to do it all.
For some reason or another, the Phillies manager, Gene Mauch, suddenly changed the way he used his pitchers. It seemed like all he wanted to do was play Jim Bunning and Chris Short, like Art Mahaffey and Ray Culp or even Rick Wise didn’t even exist. The sports announcers were all saying that Gene Mauch was wearing his best pitchers out, and the losses were piling up. The fans were losing their patience and their confidence, and they began to boo, and I mean boo.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on television. The Phillies were falling apart. I saw them blow big leads and fail to take advantage of every opportunity they had to win a game. It was like I was watching an entirely different team than what I had seen all summer. They had become what every Phillies fan had expected, a major-league disappointment.
Six games-that’s all they needed to win. They lost ten in a row, and now the St. Louis Cardinals were in first place with just two games left to play.
The Phillies still had a chance. If they could beat the Reds and the Cardinals lost to the Mets, then the Phils, Reds and Cardinals would end up in a three-way tie for first, leading to a playoff to see who would go to the World Series.
This was exciting to me, I don’t think this had ever happened before, a three way tie for first place. You could just feel the tension in my neighbors. The Clays were pretty rabid Phillies fans, and you could hear Mrs. Avis screaming at the television all during the losing streak.
Well, the Phils got lucky. On Friday, October 2, they squeezed out a 4-3 win over the Reds and the lowly Mets destroyed the Cards 15-5. All the Phillies had to do was win on Saturday and hope that the Mets could pull off another victory over the Cardinals.
Maybe it was just fate or bad luck or maybe just because it’s Philadelphia.
The Phils clobbered the Reds, 10-0.
But the Cardinals beat the Mets, 11-5.
Butch and Billy Clay were stunned.
Mrs. Avis was hoarse from all the yelling.
Phillies fans everywhere just couldn’t believe it.
The sportswriters were pointing their fingers.
I didn’t feel too bad, after all my team, the Yankees, were going to the World Series, and I figured they’d beat the pants off of the Cardinals, so that would even the score.
It was a shame what happened.
A season full of so much hope and so much promise.
For a change Phillies fans had an exciting season, but it ended the way all seasons had.
In bitter disappointment.
“There was no joy in Mudville......”

The 1964 Election

2009-07-22T19:20:00.003-04:00

President Johnson is running for re-election this year. The only thing I know about it is that he's running against a senator from Arizona named Barry Goldwater, and that the Democrats have their convention in Atlantic City. My parents watch the convention, and it's on all of the channels, so there's nothing on TV while the convention is going on.
There's a lot of name-calling. People accuse President Johnson of being corrupt, and that he fixed a lot of elections when he was running for office in Texas. Some people are saying that maybe he had something to do with President Kennedy's assassination. A lot of people don't like the fact that he's sending more and more soldiers over to Vietnam, and most white people don't like him because he's getting a lot of civil rights laws passed.
Senator Goldwater is being called a war-monger. He claims there's no shame in using whatever force is necessary in order to defeat the Communists. I don't like the way he looks. He looks spooky to me, and Lyndon Johnson is pretty creepy-looking too.
The election is beyond me. Political things just seem so complicated, you know? Who knows what to believe?
But one night I see this commercial for Lyndon Johnson, and it scares me to death. A lot of people are scared to death.
I have trouble sleeping after seeing that commercial.
Suddenly I hope that Barry Goldwater isn't elected our next president, and President Johnson doesn't seem so spooky at all.

Surviving Gateway

2009-07-22T15:12:00.001-04:00

I started out my first few days at Gateway a little intimidated by it all, but after a while I got used to the routine, and I was making a few new friends. Most of my new friends were the smarter kids in school. There’s this guy from Westville named Grant Karsner who seems like he could be Mr. Peabody from Rocky and Bullwinkle. Grant is really good with math, something I struggle with. I’m getting to know another kid from Westville. Bruce Zahn is his name. He’s smaller than me and kinda quiet-the soft-spoken type.
I was right about Jack Wiler from Wenonah. He and I share a lot of the same interests. We talk about Marvel Comic books-which artists we like and which super heroes are our favorites. Jack likes history too, so I’ve found somebody else other than Steve Kay I can talk to about World War II and all the other wars I like to read about.
My locker mate, Gary Lundquist keeps pumping me for information about all the girls from Woodbury Heights. I’d like to help him out, but I really don’t know much about them personally, only from what I know when we’re in school. I can tell him that Joyce Hoefers is as good an athlete as any boy and she’s a nice person, except if you’re trying to dunk her under the water, then watch out! I agree with him that Sheila McLaughlin is pretty, and once again I don’t know too much about her as a person. I like Gary, he’s good at making jokes and he seems real intelligent when he speaks. He’s kind of like a junior William F. Buckley; a mini-intellectual. I seem to be able to make him laugh real hard sometimes. Gary tells me he’s interested in a girl from my class that I hardly ever spoke to, Debbie Pryzwara. Her father is working on his house or something, and he thinks that he’d like to get to know her. I tell him that Debbie was kinda quiet and shy in school, and I don’t live on her side of town. I tell Gary he should ask Don Vanneman about Debbie-he lives across the street from her. Whether or not he acts on my advice, I’ll never know. I do know he’s also interested in Sue Burns, the girl I’ve always had a huge crush on. I’m too awkward and shy to ever tell Sue Burns I like her. I thought that I’d get up enough courage to talk to her now that we’re in high school and all, but I don’t.
There are lots and lots of pretty girls to meet and admire. They’re everywhere, but what does that matter to me? I’m this skinny awkward goofball with a crew cut. I look more and more like Jerry Lewis the longer I keep getting my hair cut this way, but I don’t have a choice, that’s how my parents tell me to get it cut, so that’s that. Anyway, when I tried to let my hair grow long a few years ago it was a disaster. It’s better to get it cut off than plastering it down with a whole bottle of hair tonic.
I decide that I’m going to join the school newspaper. I have an interest in writing, and I used to pretend that I ran a newspaper when I was younger. They make me the sports editor. Sports? I don’t know much about sports at all. I know about baseball mostly. I’ve played football in the yard but I don’t know much else about it and I know absolutely nothing about basketball. The few times I’ve tried to play basketball with Jimmy Matsuk and Paul LaPann and some of the others I was just horrible, so I’ve stayed away from it.
Mr. Harvey is the basketball coach. I know Mr. Harvey from Woodbury Heights Elementary school, so it will be easy to talk to him. I write down a whole bunch of questions for Mr. Harvey about the upcoming basketball season and how he thinks the team will do. Most of my questions are pretty open-ended, so he can be free to answer them in any way, and I won’t look like I don’t know what I’m talking about. Mr. Harvey answers all my questions and then some, so I’ve got a lot of good material for my article about the boys’ basketball team. The only thing is, when the newspaper is finally printed, most of our news is so old that nobody really cares about reading it. After Christmas vacation I lose interest and quit the paper.
A lot of kids are choosing activities to join. Football, basketball, field hockey, cheerleading, color guard; everyone is picking something.
I’m not a jock, my athletic abilities usually provoke laughter rather than admiration, so I join the Chess Club. My neighbor Mr. Olsen taught me how to play chess. I wasn’t very good at it, but I loved listening to him speak to me in his Norwegian accent, so I tried the best I could. Since chess is a military game I figured it would grow on me, but somehow my brain couldn’t wrap itself around the subtleties of the strategy, and I couldn’t see the moves ahead of time like you’re supposed to. I lost pretty much all of the time. Years later my long time friend Keith Madden and I would play chess almost every day and every day he would beat me. One day I noticed that I was doing very well against him, and it looked like I was going to win. Keith had reached a point in the game where his next move would decide whether or not I could beat him. I figured he could see that I could win and make the right move to prevent it. To my surprise he didn’t, and the next thing I know I’m calling out Checkmate!
Keith couldn’t believe his eyes. I think he studied the board for at least twenty minutes before conceding the game. I didn’t believe it either.
I didn’t join anything else. I wasn’t confident enough to try out for sports, and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time practicing a musical instrument, so band was out for me. Good thing too, because kids who were in the band seemed to have been placed in a whole different category of nerddom. I never understood why though. I always envied people who could play an instrument. Playing one of those horns or reed instruments is hard to do, and you have to practice as much as any athlete, so I never understood why kids in the band were ridiculed so much.
I was keeping my head down, trying not to get noticed, just flowing along and trying to get good grades. I sat at the lunch table with guys like Bruce Zahn and Grant Karsner, Ken Fell and Ralph Leeds and Jack Wiler. I had pretty much lost touch with most of the boys I went to school with in Woodbury Heights, except for Steve Kay. He and I pretty much kept to ourselves, and after school we contented ourselves with playing Avalon Hill war games and moving Airfix toy soldiers around on the desert we built in his basement.
I’m getting by OK so far. My grades are good and I’ve made a few new friends. Maybe this new school isn’t so bad after all.
Well, I’ve still gotta survive gym class. And let's not forget the cafeteria.
We’ll see.
We'll see.

Lunchtime at Gateway

2009-07-21T07:26:00.003-04:00

Our cafeteria isn't quite ready for us when we first start school. We have to bring our lunches and eat in our homerooms for a while. The cafeteria itself is a makeshift gymnasium, perfect for calisthenics and close-order drill. We also play "Crab Soccer", a game played with a giant canvas ball. We sit on the floor with our arms behind us, pulling ourselves with our legs. You can only kick the ball, you can't touch it with your hands, and it's a welcome relief from all those muscle-bending exercises.
It takes a while, but the cafeteria is finished, and lunch periods can begin. The cafeteria lacks any ambiance at all. It's just a big open room with bare cinder block walls painted a kind of institutional green. Long tables in rows that remind me of the mess halls in prison movies or movies about boot camp in the army.
It's loud in the cafeteria. Dozens of voices chattering away all at once, a sudden change from the relative quiet of our classrooms.
When they begin serving us food, or at least their idea of food, it seems like most of the time we're served something made of ground beef and starch. Sloppy Joes, beef-a-roni, or chili with beans. The pizza is unlike any pizza I've ever eaten. We pour the grease off of it before even trying to eat it. Most kids eat the French fries and the hot dogs. Lunch costs 35 cents. There is a moment in time that is somewhat surreal. They serve something called Turkey On A Stick. What it is I couldn't say for sure. There's some kind of fried glob of what looks like a meat product on the end of one of those pointed wooden skewers that you usually have a candied apple on. Who thought any of us would want to eat this? I steer clear of that concoction, and it disappears from the menu rather quickly. What were they thinking with that one?
You can get an ice cream sandwich for a dime, and after a while that pretty much consists of my lunch until I start bringing my own again.
There's not much in the way of fruits or vegetables, and the small fruit cups they do have usually end up being used as missiles. The grapes, mostly and sometimes the pudding. Somebody always seems to feel the need to toss some grapes during lunch period. I guess being cooped up in the building all day creates so much tension in some of us that the only way they can release it is by throwing food.
I don't like the cafeteria. There's this unofficial pecking order in there. Nerds like me are clustered together for safety's sake, where we can talk about TV shows and comic books. We're inevitably the target of the food throwers at some point; everyone knows that nerds don't fight back.
The popular kids, the "beautiful people" are in their own section,as are the jocks and the greasers and the tough guys. The least popular kids, the "Lost Souls", must find a table that will accept at least one of them.
I do not like lunch period. We can't leave the building for some reason. In elementary school we could go outside and play in the playground and get some fresh air for a while, but here in high school I feel trapped, and the feeling is made worse because my house is only minutes away. Who would be hurt by my walking home for lunch? Why can't we go outside for a few minutes? Do they think we'll all run away?
This is far worse than the little lunch room I had to endure at the Woodbury Heights Elementary School.
I'm going to have to put up with this for six years?
There's gotta be a way out of this.
There's just got to.

Only The Strong Survive

2009-07-16T23:23:00.000-04:00

There’s no recess in high school. They call it Physical Education now. We call it gym class. It looks to me like almost every boy in the Seventh Grade is here. Our bodies are still developing, and most of us are skinny and gangly, barely a muscle showing. We’re all together in gym; the short and the tall, the tough guys and the wimps, the nerds and the jocks-nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide.
Our teacher is Mr. Williamson, all crew-cut and bluster. He is obsessed with us wearing ONLY our gym suits in class-there will be no exceptions. And we MUST wear white socks at all times, and jock straps-no underwear may peek out from your gym shorts.
Our gym suits are white T-shirts with Gateway in blue letters, and our shorts are blue with white letters. You can wear white or black sneakers, the color doesn’t matter, but you must wear sneakers. NO EXCEPTIONS!
Mr. Williamson treats us all like we’re Gomer Pyle. He screams at us. There will be no sympathy from Mr. Williamson. We all think of him as a maniac, a hard-nosed bully who gets his kicks out of making young boys feel even smaller than they are.
The gym isn’t finished yet. The floor hasn’t been laid down, so we have to use the cafeteria. Mr. Williamson lines us up military style, in squad formation.
He has us march in close-order drill. Left, idle left, idle left, right, left. Left, left, left, right left. And on and on and on.
I don’t mind the marching so much. It’s easy and you can’t really get embarrassed like you can trying to play some sport you’re no good at. We’re all on a level playing field just marching. It does feel kind of eerie though, as if he’s getting us ready for the military; preparing to ship us off to Vietnam.
The calisthenics are another thing altogether. Mr. Williamson has us doing push-ups and sit-ups and jumping jacks and all manner of body crunching exercises that push us all to the limit.
By the time gym class is over we’re sweaty and sore and we feel as if we’ve been in the Bataan Death March. We have to go back to regular classes after this.
The locker room is a crowded affair, and some guys are embarrassed to be seen naked by the rest of us. Some are so intimidated that they hold towels in front of themselves while taking a shower. I guess they never had to share a bath tub with a brother or a cousin or something.
Mr. Williamson makes it clear that EVERYONE must take a shower. EVERYONE!
It’s hell for the timid among us.
Mr. Williamson makes it clear that EVERYONE must have a lock for their gym locker.
As if someone would want to steal my gym shorts. I do not bring anything of value with me to school.
It’s an hour of “Lord of the Flies”, and then back to class.
I’m still sweating from it all even though I’ve had a shower.
The muscles in my arms and legs ache for the rest of the day. I can barely carry my textbooks.
I will hear Mr. Williamson’s voice in my sleep.
Physical Education they call it.
Three days a week.
Oh for another chance at recess.

Gateway: The First Day

2009-07-16T15:34:00.007-04:00

A warm September day this first day of school. My first day in Gateway Regional High School just a few yards down the road from my home.
I don't have to rush to get ready, the school is right behind my house, so I stay in bed for as long as I can, savoring the last minutes of summer vacation.
There is no way to prepare for this, to be thrown into a new building with hundreds of other kids from four different towns, four different worlds.
I and everyone else will be creating something new in this rectangle of bricks and mortar, rising up from what used to be Mr. Rizzuto's field.
It wasn't long ago that Paul Avis and my brother and I ventured out into this field as the Bulldog Patrol, our army platoon, ready to take on the Nazis. Mr. Rizzuto spotted us and mistook us for older boys armed with BB guns, and he came roaring at us full speed in his pick up truck.
"Let me see those guns," he barked.
"You boys better not be huntin' out here."
"No sir, I said, "they're just training rifles. You can't load them with anything. They're not real."
Mr. Rizzuto grunted, and satisfying himself that we weren't out to kill anything, he rode off, warning us to be careful.
We did not enter the field again after that encounter.
I walk past what's left of the woods behind my house,the woods where I used to roam all day long. I'm walking in the shoulder of Egg Harbor Road towards that field where Mr. Rizzuto didn't want us to play. It's hot, but the trek won't last very long.
Yellow buses zoom past me, hauling the kids from Wenonah. I can hear them laughing and yelling and talking as they pass me by.
Cars and buses are pulling into the parking lot, and the grounds in front of the school are filled with kids waiting for the first bell to ring.
Is everyone as nervous as I am? Not too many of my classmates from the Heights are in class 7C. I'm not comfortable about this. I don't like letting go of things that are safe and familiar. What if the kids in my class are all smarter than me, or if I'm somehow put into a class of all wise guys or something? Will I be looked upon as a nerd, once again the only boy still sporting a crew cut?
The bell rings and we flow into the building. I've got to find room 214, that's my homeroom; the teacher will be a Mrs. Conaway.
We're directed where to go,and I'm caught up in a current of bodies all trying to find their way home. I feel like I'm in one of those science experiments where they put a mouse in a maze and I'm looking for a piece of cheese, except there's hundreds of other mice getting in my way, and I'll never be able to see the cheese through all these bodies.
Somehow I find room 214, and Mrs.Conaway who's standing outside the door like all the other teachers. She says hello and tells me where to sit, and I take my place and get a look at my new surroundings.
Everything is new. Our desks aren't really desks, they're more like little tables attached to orange/red plastic seats by chrome-plated tubes. More tubes underneath the seat are where you store your books when you don't need them. Not much room under there, and your feet are likely to kick them off if you're not careful. The clock is new, and the flag and the walls and the blackboard-which isn't black anymore, it's a kind of green color.
There's a speaker on the wall and someone is constantly making announcements.
We all have to stand for the National Anthem and to say the Pledge of Allegiance-the whole school all at once-along with that voice coming over the PA system in the wall.
I find out that Homeroom is where they take roll and give out information. It's where our lockers will be, just outside in the hall. Two people share a locker. My locker mate will be this guy from Westville, a kid named Gary Lundquist. He wears glasses and he looks a lot smarter than me. He seems a lot more outgoing than I am, and he's already talking to everybody, making wise cracks the whole time.
Mrs. Conaway tells us that in a few minutes first period will begin, and the bell will ring and we'll all have to wander the halls looking for our next classroom.
Wandering and searching. Wandering and searching. A river of children flowing through the halls. Every once in a while you see someone from your home town and you call out to them but you can't stop, you're caught up in the current, lost souls looking for classrooms.
It will go on like this all day. Wandering, searching. Books piled up in your arms. Meeting new kids and looking for old familiar faces. Lunch in the cafeteria sitting at long tables that look like the ones in those old James Cagney prison movies.
Parts of the school aren't finished yet. The gym's not done, so we'll have to use the cafeteria. The auditorium isn't finished and some of the biology labs aren't either.
I'm not comfortable this first day of school, but it goes by quickly. I don't have time to think about it too much with all the scrambling about and looking at schedules and learning locker combinations and carrying all those books. Bells ringing and announcements over the PA system. Lots of new teachers and a river of children to contend with.
Before you know it the school day is over and I'm back in Homeroom waiting for the final bell to ring.
I made it! It wasn't too horrible, but it was a bit overwhelming. I hardly saw any of my former Woodbury Heights classmates all day. It looks like I'm the only boy from the Heights in class 7C. Who decided that and why?
I think I'm going to like my locker mate, this Gary Lundquist kid from Westville. He's in class 7C as well, so I see him most of the day. There's this other guy named John, but he prefers Jack. He's from Wenonah and I kinda see some of myself in him. I heard him talking about Marvel comic books and it sounds like he likes history just like I do, so I think he and I could be friends. Lots of new last names.
Albright, Banks, Camp, Chattin, Fell and Leeds. I'll sit behind Lundquist in most of my classes. Stens, Stokes, Wernig, Williams, Wiler and Zahn. New names, new faces. New everything.
Kids empty the building at the end of the day, rushing down Helen Avenue back into Woodbury Heights; boarding the buses for Westville, National Park and Wenonah.
It's a short walk for me, up out of the field and past the woods, past the places I used to roam. Past the places where Mr. Rizzuto didn't want us to play.

Milestone

2009-07-11T11:23:00.002-04:00

I thought I'd take a time out to tell those of you who are reading that my previous post, Thinking Hard, is number 200. Two hundred short stories, free verse, notes, and once in a while a little venting. I never thought I'd get this far. There have been times when I thought I had run out of gas or family problems have gotten so pressing that I'd just throw in the towel. Anyway, here I am and where I'll go from here is anyone's guess. If you're a regular reader, thank you. Thanks to those four who like the blog enough to sign on as regular followers. Jess, Bob Thomas, Bob Smith and Alan.
Special thanks to my wife Patty for her support, and to Jack Wiler for daring me to write again. I have received e-mails from people who grew up in Woodbury Heights telling me how much they've enjoyed my stories and the memories I've brought back to life. Thanks to John, Janice, and Joyce and all the others. Thanks to everyone I've mentioned in the blog, you've all been good sports, and I haven't received any threatening letters. I need to sit back for a while and gather my thoughts. I've also got to find a job - my unemployment benefits won't last forever you know. What I'd like is for anyone who reads the blog to put up a comment or even a question you may have for me. I think it would be nice to see the Maddox Corner "community" and what you're all thinking. So send me your comments and questions. I'll be happy to respond. Give me some time and the "Gateway Era" shall begin. Thanks again for reading. Stay tuned.

Thinking Hard

2009-07-11T10:22:00.004-04:00

There's so much on my mind now that summer is almost over. I look through the chain-link fence and stare at Gateway Regional High School rising up just past the trees. What will it be like, I wonder?
So much to think about this summer.

Will the Phillies stay in first place? It looks like they've got a lock on the championship, so it's a good bet they'll play the Yankees in the World Series. I'm hoping the Phillies make it. It would be neat to see them play against Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Whitey Ford. Maybe there'll be a home run slug fest with Johnny Callison and Richie Allen challenging Mickey and Roger and Joe Pepitone. The Yankees in Connie Mack Stadium! I bet Dad could get us tickets for that.

I think more about the war in Vietnam. I still don't understand it too much. I can't tell if anyone is winning or not. Seems like every time the news comes on there's a new leader of South Vietnam, and President Johnson keeps sending more of our soldiers over there. The war is getting bigger all because an American destroyer called the Maddox was attacked by little patrol boats or something. I wonder who the Maddox was named after? I don't have any relatives I know of named Maddox. All of my Dad's family is called Woodward 'cause his father died and Dad really never knew him. I hope our family doesn't get blamed for getting us deeper into war. I don't think I'll have to go and fight over there. I'll be thirteen at the end of the year and in five more years I'll have to register for the draft. The war will be over by then I think. At least I hope so. I play war a lot and I like to watch war movies, but I'm no dummy. I know what war is and I don't think I want any part of this one. I don't want to die in a jungle somewhere far away.

One night near the end of August we hear about a riot in Philadelphia. We're watching John Facenda on Channel 10 talking about black people going crazy in North Philadelphia. It seems it all started when a black lady's car stalled out in the middle of the street,and when some policemen tried to get her to move it an argument broke out. It got worse after that and a crowd gathered, and the lady was arrested, and then a rumor started. The rumor was that a pregnant black lady was beaten to death, but that didn't really happen but it didn't matter, everyone went crazy and started breaking into stores and starting fires and just going nuts. We watched the violence on the local news. The police just stood by and didn't do much. Lots of black people got arrested and lots and lots of stores were destroyed. Police brutality was the cause of this, a lot of people said. I couldn't understand this the same way I couldn't understand Vietnam, but it was just across the river, and it was frightening. People just spinning out of control, right here, so close to home. North Philadelphia is where the Phillies play ball. I don't think Dad will get us tickets for the World Series now.

In a few days I'll walk a few yards down Egg Harbor Road to a new school, to a whole new world. What will that world be like, I wonder?
Mom will drag us around to Kresge's and W.T.Grants and Ernie's Shoe Post and I'll try on clothes and shoes until I can't stand it anymore. We'll go to Woolworth's and buy pencils and paper and I have to get a three ring binder notebook for some reason or another.

I'm still wondering what homeroom is all about. It's not a class but we'll have a homeroom teacher. I don't get it.
A different teacher for each subject, and kids from four different towns.
What will they be like, I wonder?

Soon now. Soon.

I'll put on my new plaid shirt and my new khaki pants and the collar will itch and my new shoes will feel tight on my feet and I'll be uncomfortable just walking those few yards down the road.

Soon now. Soon.

I hope I'm ready for this.

The Beating of Drums

2009-06-27T08:47:00.003-04:00

This war not a war over there in Vietnam is confusing. We heard that the two American destroyers, the Maddox and the Turner Joy were attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats for no reason on August 4th. Now on the news they're saying that the ships were really attacked on August 2nd, and they may have been attacked on the 4th, but no one is really sure.
President Johnson has told us that it was unprovoked, that our destroyers were just minding their own business out at sea, not doing anything.
I don't understand this. Aren't we over there helping the South Vietnamese fight the communists? If we're helping to fight the North Vietnamese, doesn't it make sense for them to attack us?
I'm hearing more and more about this Vietnam this year.
Back in May, there were protests held by students in New York City and San Francisco and a few other places. They marched and held up signs saying that the war was wrong and that we should get our troops out of there. Most people say these students are just cowards and don't want to be drafted to defend our country from Communism; that they're just afraid to die.
I guess I kind of agree with that. I mean, aren't we a nation of freedom, and aren't we supposed to help other countries stay free? It's what I've been taught, it's what I believe, you know?
This war not a war is different though. It's not like when my Dad and my friends' dads were fighting in World War II. I don't read about sweeping marches and the taking of cities or tank battles. There's no front lines changing hands or territory captured, measuring our success.
I hear of villagers being killed, and the communists control most of the countryside.
It seems like every month there's another one of those coups, and the government of South Vietnam is being run by somebody else with a name I can't pronounce.
President Johnson sent five thousand more advisers over there, and I hear on the news that we now have over twenty thousand soldiers in South Vietnam, and that almost two thousand Americans have been killed so far.
The day after the Maddox and the Turner Joy were attacked, President Johnson has our planes bomb the North Vietnamese. He gives a speech that night, and tells us that we are just punishing the Communists for attacking our ships, and that "We still do not seek a wider war."

They say on the news that the Congress is meeting to give the president all the power he wants to fight the war in South Vietnam.
To me this is sounding more like a war - a real war over there in Vietnam. The latest president of South Vietnam is saying that North Vietnam should be invaded, and the Viet Cong are even attacking cities now.
But I have faith and confidence in our soldiers. I mean we're the best in the world, aren't we? We beat Hitler and Tojo in World War II, and they were a lot tougher than these little guys in black pajamas weren't they?
I bet we beat those Viet Cong real quick. We'll train the South Vietnamese so good that they'll be as tough as we are, and with our planes and helicopters and artillery to support them, they'll win for sure.
I don't think I'll have to worry about going over there.
It's five more years till I can be drafted.
Yeah, that war will be over long before then.

August 4, 1964

2009-06-25T12:05:00.005-04:00

Here in Woodbury Heights we're watching Cheryl Ann opening her presents. My sister is two years old today and of course we're having a party for her in the shade of the old maple tree. It's not my idea of something to do on a warm summer day; spending the afternoon with a bunch of little kids, but most of my friends are away on vacation.

In Neshoba County, Mississippi, it's a hot summer day and FBI agents are opening the walls of an earthen dam. It's not something these men want to be doing in this ninety degree heat, but they've been searching for so long and they want an end to this case.

Off the coast of North Vietnam a navy destroyer, the USS Maddox along with the Turner Joy is patrolling the high seas. The sailors would much rather be in port instead of on the lookout for incoming torpedoes.

In Woodbury Heights we have cake and ice cream on the picnic table and the little kids play Pin the Tail On the Donkey and drop clothes pins into the milk bottle as they try to win the small prizes my mother has to reward them.

FBI agents work feverishly, at a steady pace, sweating and swearing in the hot Mississippi sun, hoping that this time they'll find what they've been looking for.

Sailors on the decks of the Maddox and Turner Joy are searching the horizon, hoping for another routine patrol; they don't want another firefight with the North Vietnamese patrol boats.

It's a beautiful day in Woodbury Heights, not too hot for a day in August. My sister is happy and all my younger cousins and neighbors are full of cake and ice cream. Cheryl Ann has her presents and the party is over and I'm free to go ride my bike or go down to the lake or just do whatever I want. Still a few more weeks of freedom, plenty of time left until I go back to school.

In Neshoba County, Mississippi, in the wall of an earthen dam, three bodies are found. Two white, one black. The FBI agents can rest easy now, they've found what they've been looking for.
Their names called out once more on the evening news.
Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner.
Shot to death in Neshoba County, Mississippi.

The USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy will be fired upon by North Vietnamese patrol boats; at least that's what we'll hear on the evening news. An unprovoked attack, President Johnson will call it. Somewhere off the coast of North Vietnam. A place called the Gulf of Tonkin and a ship with my family's name, and the country plunging deeper into war.

A warm and sunny day in Woodbury Heights. The perfect day for my sister's birthday.

Southern Exposure

2009-06-16T22:51:00.006-04:00

The lazy summer days of July are upon us and in Neshoba County, Mississippi.
The search for three young men, two white, one black, goes on.
Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner
I hear their names on the evening news.
The FBI is scouring Neshoba County, Mississippi.
They find bodies of young black men who had disappeared.
One, then another and then another-a dozen or so.
Bodies of black men swallowed up in the darkness,
Gone missing in Neshoba County.
Mourned only by their families who could not ask for justice.
Body after body and still the same evening chant,
Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner.
Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner.
FBI agents are met with silence.
No one is talking, black or white,
But they know-
Everyone knows.
The Ku Klux Klan-
It’s their handiwork.
Men who wrap themselves in the flag
And hide beneath hoods and robes.
The local police of Neshoba County.
The “good ‘ol boys” of Neshoba County.
They hide beneath hoods and robes.
The politicians of Mississippi who say:
“These three boys are probably hiding.”
They hide beneath hoods and robes.
They say nothing of the bodies that are found.
The bodies of black men who disappeared,
Swallowed up in the darkness.
Somewhere in Neshoba County, Mississippi.
Throughout July I hear it.
Three names called out on the evening news.
Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner
Three young men, two white, one black.
Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner.
I hear their names over and over.
Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner.
Swallowed up in the night.
Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner.
Gone without a trace.
Somewhere in Neshoba County, Mississippi.

Phillies Fever

2009-06-16T12:16:00.004-04:00

It's early July and the Phillies are in first place. First place? The Phillies? No one can believe it, especially long time Philly fans. I mean they're always losing and playing just awful and that's what everyone in the Delaware Valley expects, you know? These Phillies are turning the baseball world upside down. We're not used to having a winning Phillies team, and the fans are just plain giddy. My neighbor Billy Clay just can't stop talking about them and his favorite player Johnny Callison. He worships the young veteran outfielder with the same passion I have for Mickey Mantle. Johnny Callison is having a great season, driving in runs, hitting homers and playing an almost flawless right field.
This new guy Richie Allen is really hitting the ball for average and lots of power. There's talk of him making rookie of the year if he keeps playing like this. Who are these guys? The fans of Philadelphia finally have a team that looks like it's going to go all the way to the world series. Not since the "Whiz Kids" of 1950. The "Whiz Kids" played the Yankees in the world series in 1950, maybe this year will be a repeat of that.
Johnny Callison is picked for the All-Star game. Richie Allen is not. Allen is a good player but he's not well liked, so maybe that's the reason he's not picked. The National League team is loaded with superstar outfielders, so most people don't think Johnny Callison will even get a chance to play. With guys like Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Hank Aaron, Billy Williams and Willie Stargell on the team, it looks like Callison will sit this one out.
Well, Hank Aaron is sick and not able to play the outfield, so Callison comes into the game, pinch-hitting for his teammate Jim Bunning in the fifth inning. He pops out.
Callison gets his chance for glory in the ninth inning. With the game tied with two outs and two runners on base, he drills a ball into the right field stands, winning the game for the National League! Not only that, Johnny Callison is named the game's Most Valuable Player! Just like Jim Bunning's perfect game a few weeks ago, it's another dramatic moment for Phillies fans everywhere.

Johnny Callison is mobbed by his teammates after winning the All-Star game with a three run homer.

My neighbors are giddy. The sports announcers on TV are giddy. Sally Starr is giddy.
The Phillies keep on winning.
Our fathers' card games on the weekends take a back seat to the ball games.
Everyone is talking about the Phillies going to the world series this year.

Like I said before, I gotta pay attention to this.

Missing Persons

2009-06-13T11:54:00.003-04:00

As the baseball fans of Philadelphia were celebrating the perfect game victory of the Phillies over the Mets, there was something else going on in another Philadelphia, another "city of brotherly love".
Philadelphia, Mississippi.
We would hear about it on the news.
The names of three young men who had disappeared.
Three young men, one black, two white.
Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner.
These young men were civil rights workers trying to educate and register black people to vote in the south.
Agitators, they were called by the police and politicians in Mississippi.
Informing black people of their rights as Americans was not welcome in Mississippi.
Three young men had disappeared.
One black, two white.
Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner.
Their names repeated again and again on the evening news.
The Ku Klux Klan was suspected.
Members of the police were suspected.
Men in hoods and sheets burning crosses on the evening news.
Three young men had disappeared.
Vanished into the night.
One black, two white.
Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner.
Not a trace, not even their car could be found.
On a lonely road it happened.
Outside of Philadelphia.
Philadelphia, Mississippi.
Every night on the evening news, the same sad story.
Three young men had disappeared.
One black, two white.
Chaney. Goodman. Schwerner.
Chaney. Goodman. Schwerner.
Outside of Philadelphia.
Philadelphia, Mississippi.
Vanished into the night...

The Phillies?

2009-06-11T09:02:00.024-04:00

Connie Mack Stadium Home of the Phillies

I"m a baseball fan in 1964. A Yankees fan to be exact, but something was happening that couldn't be ignored: the Phillies were winning! No really, I'm not kidding, the Phillies are winning and they're in first place and it looks like they might go all the way to the world series.
I didn't pay much attention to the Phillies. They always seemed to play really bad and never go anywhere but down in the standings. The last time they were in first place was 1950, and I hadn't even been born yet.
Even when you thought about really great players, not too many Phillies would come to mind, 'cause most of them played a long time ago.
Listening to the Phillies games on the radio was a summer ritual. My Dad and Mr. Avis and Mr. Olsen and Mr. Collins would play pinochle outside under the Avis' cherry tree, and the sounds of the game would drift throughout our two yards. The familiar voices of By Saam, Bill Campbell and now Richie Ashburn could be heard calling the games all weekend.
The card game was all important; the ball game just background noise unless something exciting was going on, and most years that didn't happen too much.
This year was different. The card games were interrupted by the Phillies and their phenomenal rise to the top of the National League.
These Phillies were for real. They're led by rookie third baseman Richie Allen and young outfielder Johnny Callison.

Home runs are flying off of their bats, and veteran Wes Covington is adding his power as well. The two Tonys, Taylor and Gonzalez, are steady players, and a young utility player named Cookie Rojas is on the bench when needed.
The pitching staff is anchored by Jim Bunning and Chris Short, and relief pitcher Jack Baldshun was saving games left and right.
What is this? A good Phillies team? Baseball fans didn't know how to act. The Phillies in first place, looking like they're going to walk away with it?
This can't be, I mean the world has been turned upside down.
A miracle happens on Father's Day, June 21.
Jim Bunning, who used to pitch for the Detroit Tigers, is on the mound that day.
Bunning is not what you would call a great pitcher, just reliable, you know, the kind of player who goes out every time and gives it his best shot. Well, on this day he is at his best.
When the game is over the Phillies have won 6 to 0 against the New York Mets.
It's a shutout, but something more than that. The Mets don't get a hit, they don't get a walk, they don't get an error.
It's a perfect game in a so-far perfect season.
Who woulda thought?
A Phillie pitching a perfect game, the first one in the National League in 84 years, and it's Jim Bunning who does it!
Is there something in the water this year?
A perfect game and the Phils in first place in the National League?

I'm gonna have to pay attention to this.

Late Nights, Early Mornings

2009-06-10T07:11:00.004-04:00

I couldn't wait for summer. The pure freedom of it all. There was something magical in the air on that last day of school. You felt lighter and the air was fresh and the sunlight seemed so much brighter. The possibilities were endless now in a world without structure. No bells to tell you when to come in and when to go home. No special time to get up and you don't really have to go to bed until you're tired. Sure, I had chores and now I was mowing lawns, but that wasn't every day, so my time was pretty much my own.
No matter how much fun I had in the daytime it was the late night/early morning hours that were special to me.
It was cool to be up late at night watching the Tonight Show. I felt like I was in on something that most kids had no idea was happening, like I was privy to the world of adults, listening in on all their jokes and conversations. In my mind I was current, I was hip, even though in reality I was just another 12 year old goofball with a crew cut living in a small town in South Jersey.
As good and as fun as the Tonight Show was, my favorite late-night pastime was watching movies. The Late Show and The Late Late Show, and especially the Schaefer Award Theater.
The Schaefer Award Theater came on at 11:30 on Saturday nights. It was different from the Late Show and the Late Late show in that it only had one or two commercials. It was a movie lover's dream come true: hardly any interruptions, and a kind of intermission which allowed you enough time to go downstairs to the bathroom and/or get a bowl of ice cream. The other thing about the Schaefer Award Theater was that it showed some of the best movies ever made. It was my introduction to actors like Gary Cooper and Humphrey Bogart and Gregory Peck and Katharine Hepburn. War movies and baseball dramas, comedy and tragedy, and all without all those annoying commercials every fifteen minutes.
"The Pride of the Yankees", "We're No Angels", and "Some Like It Hot", just to name a few, and I was bathed in the blue-gray glow of the television into the wee hours of the morning.
The best nights were when the programmers of the Late Show in Philly would show movies like the animated version of "Animal Farm" or "Lord of the Flies". These were movies no one had ever told me about and I felt smarter just watching them.
Of course we all had to stay up and watch the Johnny Weismuller versions of Tarzan, and I kept hoping for a repeat of the one where Jane swims naked. The Tarzan double features were the best, and I would be up until 2:30 or so wrapped up in the jungle adventures of my favorite ape-man fighting African tribes and wild animals.
It was in these early morning hours that I learned of the Marx Brothers and their zany anarchist humor. I acquired my taste for sarcasm and rebelling against the norm watching Groucho and Harpo and Chico and also W.C. Fields.
They were special nights, those summer nights, with my eyes glued to the tube, never knowing what special adventures awaited me.
Great stories, great actors, and a bowl of ice cream.
No better way to spend a summer's eve.

Bricks and Mortar

2009-06-09T08:11:00.004-04:00

First parts of the woods were torn down. Then a chain link fence went up, and the woods were no longer an extension of our world. It was like watching the Berlin Wall being built; a part of our freedom taken away from us.
Next came the earth movers and the digging machines, so we listened to the sounds of heavy equipment ripping up what used to be Mr. Rizzuto's field.
Cement trucks pouring concrete for the foundations, and then steel girders rising.
Tons of bricks and mortar, and it began to take shape. My brother and I could see it from our bedroom window, and I'd be going to school there in the fall.
It had been decided somewhere that a new high school was needed. Whose idea was this? Who decided that the woods had to come down and that Seventh and Eighth Grades couldn't be in Woodbury Heights anymore? Eventually, when it came time for high school, I mean real high school, I'd go to Woodbury like everyone else before me, a tradition, you know?
But some people had decided that a new school had to be built; that Woodbury High was getting overcrowded or something, so they picked four towns and lumped them all together into a new school district, and that district was just behind my house.
Who could understand how the towns were chosen? I lived right there, but kids all the way from National Park? And Westville? Wenonah was pretty close, so you could kinda understand them going there, but what about the kids who lived in Deptford right across the street from me? I don't get it. All these kids from the other towns will have to ride buses to school. At least I won't have to ride a bus. I'll only have to walk a few yards down Egg Harbor Road and I'm there. Just a few minutes. I'll have to be careful, there's no sidewalk, so I'll be in the street, but like I said it's not very far, not very far at all.
I have heard some people say that it's a way to keep most of us from having to go to school with the black kids. Adults seem to be preoccupied with that. I don't care about that stuff. I don't think about it. I'd just like to be with my friends that I've gone to school my whole life with for as long as possible.
It will stare back at me all summer, this new Gateway Regional High School, forcing me to think about the future and what it might hold.
They have a contest for us to name the school mascot and colors. I submit mine: red and white, and a bulldog for the mascot. Blue and White wins, and our school mascot will be an alligator. Gateway Gators, that's what we'll be. A blue and white alligator. I'm not inspired.
Later I'll find out that I'm in class 7C whatever that means. I won't know how many of my former classmates will be with me until school starts in September. I'm going to have someone named Mrs. Conaway for homeroom. Homeroom? What's that? What do they teach in homeroom anyway?
When I found out that the new high school was going to be right behind my house I rejoiced, thinking that finally after all these years I'd be able to come home for lunch every day. No such luck. Everyone has to stay in and go to the cafeteria, no exceptions, that's the rule.
No, it's not far from my house. Just a few yards, that's all.
But it might as well be on the moon.

The End -The Beginning

2009-06-05T09:34:00.009-04:00

Sixth Grade is coming to a close. My teacher, Mrs. Carey, was a good influence on me. I think she was a good influence on all of us. She gave us confidence in ourselves and treated us as adults, and we all grew closer. I do well all year and end up with a straight A average.

1957 seems so long ago now, here in June of 1964. I did not do well that first day of Kindergarden at Woodbury Heights Elementary, but here in the Sixth Grade I'm doing just fine.
This school year I learned that I could get up on a stage and entertain. I was convincing as an actor and pretty good at lecturing a class on a subject that I loved. I became better at baseball, due in large part to my new neighbors Butch and Billy Clay. The Clay family moved into the Gerbers' house, and Butch was a year younger than me and Billy was the same age as my brother Carl. They both had played in the Woodbury Little League for several years, and they were teaching me how to throw and hit and catch. Butch and I would play catch for hours on end, until our arms couldn't take it anymore. The result of all this practice meant that I wasn't one of the last ones picked during our softball games at recess and in the hardball games after school.
I was still infatuated with Sue Burns, but I never had the courage to tell her. I would try and capture her as much as possible in our final Team Tag games during the last weeks of school. Maybe when we get to high school I'll get up the nerve to express myself.
I'm not quite in that awkward stage yet. No pimples and just a hint of facial hair. In December I'll be thirteen, and I'm not sure if I'm ready to be a teenager just yet. I'll have the summer to think about that and the new high school.
This summer I'll be mowing a lot of grass, and I'll be making money cutting that older lady's yard over on Maple Street. Once in a while I'll fill in for Steve Kay and do his paper route for him when he and his family go on vacation.
Vacation! Time for swimming at the lake and long afternoons playing baseball and riding bikes. My parents are talking about going down the shore for a week again, and I'm not too thrilled about that. If Dad takes us to the World's Fair again that will make up for having to go down to Whale Beach and all that damp.
This summer I plan to watch a lot of movies on the Late Show and the Late Late Show. Mom says I can stay up later now that I'm older. Carl can fall asleep anywhere, so it won't bother him if I watch movies into the early morning hours.
We've got a dog again. Dad brought home a little black poodle that someone lost or abandoned in Woodbury. It was in the barber shop and no one knew what to do for it, so Dad brought the dog home. We're going to call him Max. I won't have much to do with him at first because I don't like the idea of replacing Whee-Zee with such a wimpy little thing, so Max kinda becomes Carl's dog. I get over myself after a while, and I accept Max as one of the family.
I'll see Steve Kay and Paul LaPann and Billy Hills and some of the other guys this summer. Steve and I are looking forward to playing war outside and with our Airfix toy soldiers in his basement.
Gateway Regional High School is going up behind our house, and in a few months we'll all be going there instead of that old familiar brick building with the big white doors and those old wooden windows that you open with a pole. We won't hear the creak of the wooden floors or the smell of wet coats and boots in the cloakroom. I'll walk a shorter trail to a brand new school with lots of unfamiliar faces. There's plenty of time to think about Gateway and what that will bring.
Goodbye, Woodbury Heights Elementary.
Right now it's time for summer.

Sixth Grade Last Hurrah

2009-06-04T12:53:00.003-04:00

It's still a Civil War bicentennial year in 1964. My friend Paul LaPann and I are still obsessed by it. We both read all the books we can find on the subject, and last year Dad took us to Gettysburg, and he's promised to take us down to Fredericksburg some summer.
I don't know how we do it but Paul and I convince Mrs. Carey to let us do a special report on the Civil War during class time.
We prepare maps and drawings and do our research. The day arrives and we're ready. Mrs. Carey has given us the entire afternoon to teach the class all we know about the War Between the States.
John Brown and Harper's Ferry. Slavery and Harriet Tubman. Fort Sumter and Bull Run and Gettysburg and Antietam. We talk of battles and the underground railroad and Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee. We hold up our drawings and point out battlefields on our maps. The afternoon goes by and we still have more to say. The school day is almost over, so Mrs. Carey stops us and tells us we can finish up the next day.
Tomorrow comes and in the afternoon Paul and I continue on with our stories. Mrs. Carey never figured we'd come up with so much stuff to say and after an hour or so she tells us we have to finish up, so we leave out some things and get to Appamattox and the surrender.
Paul and I could go on forever with the Civil War, but our teacher has had enough and I imagine our classmates have too.
The school year is winding down and it's our last time together as a class. Most of us have been together a long time, if not since Kindergarden, then the First Grade. I've known Nancy and Judy, Sheila and Joyce, Paul and Tommy and Richie and the others a good part of my life, and now we face an uncertain future. Will we stay together in that new high school going up behind my house, or will we all be separated? We'll still be in Woodbury Heights, but it won't be Woodbury Heights; there will be kids from National Park and Westville and Wenonah as well, and it will be called Gateway not Woodbury Heights elementary.
We go on our class trip, and guess what? We go to the World's Fair! My second time there soon after my Dad took us, and it's just as amazing as the first time I went. A great way to end the year.
Before school is over we continue our Team Tag on the school grounds, the boys against the girls.
We guard our captives even closer now, it will be hard to let them go.

Belgian Waffles, Michelangelo and Everything In Between

2009-06-04T08:55:00.017-04:00

What to say about the World's Fair? Can I tell you what my favorite thing about it was? Impossible. There's just too much to take in and almost all of it is amazing. Everywhere you look you see the future.
The space park has rocket ships and capsules and this LEM thing that will land on the moon.
There's a monorail that will transform public transportation. Soon we'll be riding on trains suspended in the air!
General Motors shows everyone what the world will be like on their Futurama ride. People will be living under the sea, high up in the mountains and deep in the jungles in space-age houses and in colonies on the moon. We'll be riding on automatic highways that control the speed and safety of the cars. In a few decades the world will be an amazing place to live.
The Unisphere is a marvel to look at. It's a giant steel globe that seems suspended in mid-air; how did they get it to stand up?
There are movies everywhere on screens large and small, and in the Port Authority building the screen wraps around the whole theater, making you feel like you're in a helicopter flying all over and around New York City. There are models of new buildings that will go up and change the skyline in the next two years; most notably the World Trade Center and its twin towers. They will start to be built in 1966, after the fair is over.
We ride in convertibles in the Ford exhibit, traveling back in time to the dinosaur era. Giant brontosaurus, eating plants look down upon us, and some triceratops are watching their eggs hatch. Cavemen hunt woolly mammoths and risk being attacked by bears in their cave. These are all acted out by those audio animatronic robots built by Walt Disney, and they sure look real.
There are pavilions from all over the world and the United States, and from the major corporations and religions too.

Dad and Cherie in front of the Thailand Pavilion

You can ride in an auto assembly line at the Chrysler exhibit, and sit in a gondola on the Ferris wheel that looks like a giant US Royal tire.
There are more life-size replicas of dinosaurs in the Sinclair Oil Dinoland park, and Carl and I make plastic dinosaurs at a machine there.
We travel through time in the General Electric Carousel of Progress where a family of Disney robots tell us all about how electric appliances have made life easier from the 1800s on into the future.
Belgium has built an entire village, making it look like an entire town has been picked up and dropped into the park. Like a lot of others we eat Belgian Waffles for the very first time. They're not like the ones Dad makes us. They're huge and square and the impressions in them are deep and filled with strawberries. The whole thing is covered in whipped cream and dusted with powdered sugar. These things really fill you up!
Pepsi Cola has a ride through villages of children from all over the world singing a song called "It's A Small World After All". It's an assault on your senses, and it's one of those songs that drives you crazy 'cause you keep hearing it over and over again in your mind.
The IBM building looks like a giant egg made out of the letters I, B and M. You sit in a grandstand that shoots up into the building. The host comes down on a small platform, and you watch movies about computers and how they're going to change the world.
Cars are everywhere too. The new Ford Mustang and GM concept cars that look like space ships. Avis has replicas of antique cars and we drive some of those for fun. There's a German company that has a car that can go from the land and into the water and run like a boat, and the James Bond Aston Martin is on display for everyone to see.
Kodak has a giant screen on top of their building which looks like huge photographs, and the Port Authority building is shaped like a big T that's flat on top so helicopters can land there.

Traveller's Insurance Company has their building shaped like their big red umbrella, and inside is an exhibit called The Triumph of Man, showing how people have overcome adversity all through history.
There are fountains all through the park, and at night they light up, creating a fantastic display of light and movement.
We go to the Vatican Pavilion to see the Pieta, and for the first time I understand what a true work of art is. You stand on a moving sidewalk that takes you past the statue very slowly. The Pieta is surrounded by dark blue drapes. I'm astounded by how real it looks. It seems as if the stone has been brought to life. The hands of Michelangelo have transformed solid rock into human beings.
In the Illinois exhibit we get to see another Disney robot. This time it's Abraham Lincoln. At first he's sitting in a chair, but he actually stands up and talks to us, and then sits back down! Soon the world must be filled with robots doing all kinds of things.
There's so much to see. DuPont and the Wonderful World of Chemistry. The House of the Future. The Tower of Light. Bell Telephone and the picture phone that lets you see the person who's calling you.
All of the states and countries from around the world. My mind reels and we travel back and forth from the past and into the future.
Amusement rides and a wax museum. Food from all over the world and the country. My favorite part? I loved it all!
On the drive back home there's so much to think about and remember.
Dinosaurs and spaceships. Belgian Waffles and Danish ham sandwiches. Monorails, robots and computers, and telephones with movie screens. Movies of every shape and size.
The future is coming and I have seen it.
Just imagine, when I'm an adult, I could be living on the moon!
Dad says we're gonna go back.
Can't wait for the summer.

On The Road

2009-05-20T19:57:00.003-04:00

The New Jersey Turnpike stretches out before us. To me it looks like it runs to the end of the earth and beyond. We're cruising along in our 1960 Edsel. The Edsel is huge inside, there's room for me and Carl and little Cheryl Ann in the back seat and we're not even crowded. My sister can even climb up onto the shelf area under the back windshield to take a nap. I can rest my whole arm outside the window in a shallow gutter formed by the body style of the car. For its time the Edsel was a failure, and they don't even make them in 1964 anymore, but Dad got a good deal and the Edsel seems like a good car to me.
There's not much to look at when you drive the turnpike, so we pass the time trying to count how many out of state license plates we can spot.

It's going to be three hours I think before we get to the world's fair. New York City! Now Philadelphia is always a big thrill for me, but now we're going to where everything is happening. The city of the Yankees and the Statue of Liberty and all kinds of stores and night clubs and millions of people all jammed together. The fair itself is in a part of New York called Flushing. Flushing Meadows, I think. An odd name that twelve year old boys can have a field day with. It sounds like we're going to a large field filled with toilets or something.
I can't wait to get there. I've seen the pictures in LIFE magazine and Disneyland has shown some of the robots on TV. It's going to be a great adventure for all of us.
The highway seems to go on forever, and we're still counting license plates when the scenery changes from trees to buildings and then to large towns and then to cities. A long bridge takes us over what looks like marshes, and then it's going over a river and we're in New York City itself. There's cars everywhere, and we're moving faster and faster to keep up. Soon we're out of Manhattan and heading into Queens and on to Flushing and the fair.
We made it and the future is calling.
Can't wait to tell you all about it.

We're Off To See The Future

2009-05-11T14:46:00.003-04:00

When they had the world's fair in Seattle it was too far away and too expensive for us to go. But now, just up the New Jersey Turnpike a new world's fair was happening. New York City is hosting the newest world's fair, and we're going!
Yep, Dad is packing us all up in the big new Edsel he bought and we're going to New York to see the fair.
I'd been reading about it in Life magazine and in the newspapers.

Walt Disney is building a lot of robots; he calls them audioanimatronics or something like that, and we'll see automated cave men and dinosaurs and characters that can move and talk like real human beings.
I'll be able to see a robot of Abraham Lincoln stand up and give a speech.
There's gonna be a giant ferris wheel shaped like a tire. The pictures look really cool. I won't go on that because of my fear of heights, but it will be neat to see it.
Wow, we're going to see the future and it's just a few hours away, just a long drive in the car!
Mom, Dad, Carl, Cheryl and me.
Let's get in the Edsel and drive.
I'll tell you all about it when we get back.

A Buzzing In Our Ears

2009-05-11T13:02:00.003-04:00

It doesn't fill the news reports much, but it's there. Once in a while we hear things and names that are hard to pronounce. We saw a Buddhist monk set himself on fire right out in front of everybody, and there are rumors that President Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA and others in our government because he was going to have our soldiers come home.
President Johnson has vowed to continue the fight over there. Our soldiers are over there, but they're not called soldiers, they're called "advisers". They get killed no matter what they're called.
The people themselves don't seem to know what they want. The government we support keeps changing all of the time. Generals come and go, taking over in something called coups. Diem, Minh, Kahn - one by one claiming they are the next savior of their country.
We don't talk much about the place, not even in school during current event days.
But it's there all of the time.
Green Berets and Viet Cong. Hamlets and fire bases and helicopters and the Ho Chi-Minh trail.
Hanoi and Saigon are cities we hear a lot about now, and the Mekong is a river and bombs are falling in a country called Laos.
It's there all of the time, just a little noise in the background, but it's there.
It's a patrol in the jungle and a village head man being hung for all to see.
Water buffaloes and rice paddies and napalm dropping from the sky.
American planes and artillery backing up the soldiers from the south as they try to control their country from the communists from the north.
It's there all of the time, just a comment or two on the evening news.
Like a clock ticking that you barely even notice.
Vietnam.........

Treading The Boards

2009-05-11T12:21:00.003-04:00

There are defining moments in everyone's life. You discover something about yourself that you didn't realize or maybe you had a hunch, but put it off to the side.
I had always had a good imagination. My imaginary friends were legion, and I talked aloud in different voices as I ran through my yard.
I was so good at it that my father would ask Mom:"Mary, who's he talking to out there?"
Later on when I had my brother and my neighbor Paul Avis as companions, I'd make up stories that we'd act out. Little plays based on movies and TV shows I'd seen.
We fought Indians and pirates. We were Tarzan in the trees and a wagon train out on the prairies. As more younger kids came into the neighborhood, my little adventures got more and more complex, and we acted out impromptu plays that I made up as the day went along.
So here in the final months of Sixth Grade I find myself in a play. It's a story about a princess and an evil knight. The evil knight is out to take control of the kingdom or something, but anyway I get the part of this bad guy, and I'm thrilled to death.
Janice Martin is the princess. She's sort of a prima donna type of person, and most of the boys don't like her very much. She's over-bearing and bossy and kind of snobby during the rehearsals, and some of the guys are planning something to get back at her.
This is the first time I've ever done anything that's scripted. I mean I have to memorize lines and all, and I'm not sure if I can or not. I do know that I'm having a lot of fun playing the bad guy, and I can't wait for rehearsal days.
For most of the time it's all just play-acting, you know, nothing's for real, just kids reciting their lines and going through the motions. Then one day it happens. There's a moment in the play when my character demands things from the princess and her father the king, and all of a sudden I'm into it. My voice rises and I feel the anger and the evil I'm supposed to portray. Then I stamp my foot really hard to make a point, and everyone jumps. I've startled everybody and they're believing that I'm really an evil knight. I feel the thrill of being a convincing actor.
This is really cool for me. I've memorized most of Bill Cosby's routines and drive my relatives nuts reciting them over and over when they come for a visit, but this is different. I'm not copying anyone else, this has come from somewhere deep inside me.
I AM the evil knight. My performance inspires the others to be better, and soon our little play seems more and more like something real.
Janice Martin is still insufferable though, and there is a plan to get even with her.
Some of the guys will put thumbtacks on her "throne" during the performance. Just enough to cause her a little discomfort and maybe make her forget her lines. We can tell by the look on her face every time she sits down that the tacks are making their presence felt, but we've got to hand it to her, Janice carries on like a trooper. After the performance is over she lifts up the crepe paper on the seat and sees the tacks. The guys try not to laugh and give their little plot away.
Our performance is a success, and the other classes give us a wonderful ovation.
I feel good about myself and my ability to act up on the stage.
I had wondered if I could do something like that before, and now I knew.
All I had to do was put my foot down.

Pulp Friends

2009-05-10T10:54:00.005-04:00

They sat on the floor of our room neatly stacked. Familiar friends on a rainy Saturday or a cold snowy day in the winter. I bought them at the newsstand in Woodbury and at the Luncheonette in Woodbury Heights. Uncle Pat brought them to me by the dozens, and there were those with the covers torn in half that we got at the Berlin Farmer's Market.
Their smell was unmistakable. Pulp paper and ink, the perfume of my youth. Heroes and villains, cartoons and satire, and I hoarded them like Midas' gold.
Superman - Batman - Justice League of America. Lost Worlds - Turok, Son of Stone. Fightin' Army, Fightin' Navy, Fightin' Marines. Our Army at War, The Haunted Tank, and Sergeant Fury and His Howling Commandos.
Superheroes and super villains all sat in the corner of my room. I read them over and over and over again. They were a welcome comfort when you were home with the flu, and one of the best unexpected presents just for being good.
Ant-Man, Giant Man. Wonder Woman and Blue Beetle. The Fantastic Four and Spider Man and the unpredictable Hulk.
Alter-egos and secret hideouts. Fortresses of solitude and underground caverns beneath storied mansions. Capes and tights and Pow! Bam! Boom!
Kid Colt, Outlaw. Two Gun Kid, Rawhide Kid. Cowboys and Indians and army and navy and the marines.
Classics Illustrated could make you feel like you'd read all the best books in the world without having to.
Little Dot. Little Audrey. Little Lotta. Richie Rich. Wendy the Good Little Witch.
Casper and Spooky. Archie and Jughead and Betty and Veronica.
Thor and Tales of Asgard. Dr. Strange the mystic. BlackHawk and his fighter planes.
Tales to Astonish. Tales of anything.
Mad magazine and Cracked.
Kirby and Ditko. Kubert and Kane. Severin and Ayres. Artists and inkers.
The smell of pulp paper and ink. Lurid covers that were often more exciting than what was inside.
Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge.
The Flash, Green Arrow, Green Lantern and the Metal Men.
Sub-Mariner, Daredevil,Iron Man and the X-men.
The Silver Surfer and Galactus.
Who was better, Marvel or DC or Charlton? Who was the greatest super hero, and would you trade me the first Spider Man for the first five Fantastic Fours?
Spider Man or Superman? Batman or the Flash?
The funny ones the war ones or the serious ones?
They were all my friends, stacked in the corners of my room.

Growing UP

2009-05-10T09:39:00.002-04:00

The spring of 1964. It's an awkward year for me and my classmates and for the country. That Cassius Clay guy, the boxer, he claims he's now a Muslim and he's changing his name to Muhammad Ali, so now everyone is confused. A lot of white Americans are confused. Scared too. White people are moving out of the cities and into small towns like mine, where they feel safe being surrounded by "their own kind". Black Americans are speaking out more and more, demanding the freedoms we're all supposed to be enjoying.
Malcolm X scares people. He's another black Muslim, and he's calling all white people devils and he says that black people should stop waiting for freedom and start fighting back-with bullets if necessary. He's a far cry from Martin Luther King, and even Dr. King frightens white people by standing up and protesting without violence.
It's hard for a twelve year old to understand any of this. There are black families living all around me and they ride the bus with us and eat at the counter in Woolworth's and sit next to me at the Wood Theatre on Saturday afternoons. There must be something to all of this, I've seen the violence in Alabama and other places on the news, and the adults talk in hushed tones about "coloreds" and how they should all go back to where they came from if they don't like it here.
I don't get it. I remember my friend Lulu from my earlier days in Woodbury Heights, and how we sat on the swings and played in the sand without a care in the world.
The cares of the world are starting to stare us all in the face now.
Me and my classmates are heading into our teenage years, and we're supposed to be "grown up" now. It's hard to let go of childish things.
I still enjoy comic books and toy soldiers and playing army in the woods. I like girls like I'm supposed to, but I'm too shy or dumb or something to express myself. Do my classmates feel the same way or are they comfortable with what's going on?
My best friend Steve Kay pretty much likes the same things I do, so I'm OK with him as my best pal.
We do take on more responsibilities this year. Steve gets a paper route delivering the Philadelphia Inquirer, and I'm mowing a lot of grass. My lawn is huge, and Dad bought the property across the street when the Leap family moved out. That yard is like a football field, and it takes me all day to cut that and my yard as well.
Mr. Olsen gets me a job taking care of an older lady's yard over on the other side of town. She's going to pay me 75 cents an hour to cut her grass and trim the bushes and rake and whatever else needs to be done. She's a friend of my scary neighbor Mrs. Price, and she teaches me about composting and organic gardening. She watches over me when I trim the bushes until she's satisfied that I'm doing it right. She's got this old orange lawn mower that looks ancient, and it doesn't want to start all of the time, and I'm constantly begging her to buy a new one, but she insists on holding on to it. I'll have to give up some of my Saturday mornings and afternoons when school is over, but I'll have silver in my pocket, and some folding money on a regular basis for the very first time. I don't have to go scrounging around for soda bottles any more.
I can see Gateway High School going up behind my house. What will that be like, I wonder? I guess I'll be separated from my old classmates. It will seem like we're not even in Woodbury Heights any more. My walk will only be a few minutes, and I won't even have a sidewalk to tread on.
This is strange, this growing up and being expected to change.
I wonder if I'm up to it.
I need Whee-Zee right now.

The British Are Coming, The British Are Coming!

2009-04-13T09:15:00.006-04:00

I don't know a lot about music yet, but I like a lot of what I hear at home and on the radio and TV. There's a lot more of that rock and roll being played now, and I watch American Bandstand sometimes before I get my Three Stooges fix on Sally Starr.
There's lots of music being played in my house. Patsy Cline and Hank Williams, Fats Domino and Elvis Presley. I like the Dixieland jazz stuff my parents play too, but I'm not too sure about Mitch Miller and Lawrence Welk.
My older cousins listen to rock and roll when they baby sit me and my bother and sister, and that stuff clings to my brain and whirls around inside my head, and I can hear those songs in my mind as I walk to school.
One day in school Mr. Lotstein, our visiting music teacher, asks us if we like the beetles. I don't quite get what he's talking about. What have bugs got to do with music, I wonder?
After a few seconds I realize he's talking about that new band from England I hear people talking about on the radio. They're supposed to be really popular over there, and now they're coming to America to play their music and to make it big in the United States, the home of rock and roll.
Mr. Lotstein asks us again. "Who likes the Beatles? Raise your hand."
Mostly the girls raise their hands.
A lot of the boys don't. Some say the Beatles just play "mushy" music about holding hands and love this and love that. They're not real rock and rollers like Chuck Berry or Elvis or Little Richard.
I don't know much about them; I'm not too sure if I've even heard their songs yet.
The Beatles must be important, I guess, if Mr. Lotstein is asking us about them. Mostly all he talks about is classical music when he comes to our school. These Beatle guys must be really good.
On February 9th the Beatles are going to be on the Ed Sullivan show, so I figure I'll see what all the commotion is about.
Well they come on alright. Just four guys in suits and hair that's a little different than most, and they play their first song. Well, I can't believe the girls in the audience. They're screaming and crying and holding their faces in their hand, and just having fits.
I don't know how they can hear the music over all the noise they're making.
The boys in the audience don't seem to be screaming or crying. Some of them look like they're enjoying the music, but I can't see how with all those girls just carrying on. It's a lot like how the kids behave at a matinee at the Wood movie theatre on a Saturday afternoon.
I don't get it. I mean the Beatles sound OK and all, but I can't understand all the screaming, especially when they all go OOOOOOH! during one of their songs. I thought all of the girls were going to pass out.
After that night all you heard about were the Beatles.
The "Mop Tops", the "Fab Four". The cute one and the smart one and the shy one and the funny one. Beatles this and Beatles that.
Seems like people are forgetting that America invented rock and roll. We can't just ignore Elvis and Ricky Nelson and Bo Diddley.
But then even more British bands start popping up.
Herman's Hermits and The Kinks and The Animals. The Dave Clark Five and Gerry and The Pacemakers. Manfred Mann and Peter and Gordon, The Rolling Stones and others.
British rockers are everywhere you look, and everybody is copying them now. Tight fitting suits and black pointy shoes and long hair.
The music is catchy, and it takes hold of me just like Bill Haley and the Comets or Jerry Lee Lewis.
Odd thing though. With all this British music taking hold the number one song on the radio is by that funny-looking guy Roy Orbison. "Oh, Pretty Woman" is at the top of the charts, and I don't even think the girls scream over him at all. Roy Orbison just kind of stands there not doing much wearing dark glasses and a haircut like Moe from the Stooges, and he's number one.
I guess these Beatles will just be a passing fad after all.
I mean we've got The Supremes and Bob Dylan and The Beachboys and Sam Cooke and Johnny Cash and Little Richard and Jan and Dean and The Everly Brothers and all the rest.
How can those English guys beat that?

Winter Joys

2009-04-12T21:06:00.004-04:00

It's Sunday, January 12, and it's snowing. The weather man says it's one of those northeaster kinds of storms, and we're going to get a lot of wind and snow. Lots and lots of snow. This kind of news on a Sunday makes the weekend even sweeter, because it looks like there's a good chance that there won't be any school tomorrow.
Snow days! Every school kid's dream in the winter. A free day to do whatever you want or get out and go sledding or build a snow fort or have a giant snowball fight over on Freund's cliff.
The snow is really coming down and the wind is picking up. Carl and I watch the flakes swirling around from our upstairs bedroom window. The white stuff is piling up, and the wind is pushing it around, forming huge drifts in the side yard. I'm twelve years old now, so I'll have to help Dad shovel the driveway so he can get to work. How he's going to drive in this stuff is a mystery to me, but the railroad never closes.
We get outside in the wind and snow, but it's hard to have any fun when the weather is this bad. Carl and I are wet and sloppy from it all, and Mom says we'll have to wait until tomorrow before we can go out again.
My brother and I content ourselves with board games and comic books the rest of the day, pausing to look out the window now and again to see how the snow is piling up. Yeah, school will be canceled for sure.
It's easy to sleep that night, knowing that we won't have to get up and get ready for school.
We still have to get out of bed the next morning and listen to Ken Garland on the radio or watch Wee Willie Webber on TV reading out the school closings.
We listen intently, and then there it is: Woodbury Heights Public School - CLOSED, and the day is ours.
Oh, the choices on a snow day are endless. It's unplanned time off, so we get to pick what to do.
Going back to sleep is an option, and it's tempting, but for once I can watch Wee Willie till the end, and then catch re-runs of shows like My Little Margie or Our Miss Brooks or even The Bob Cummings Show.
I look outside and see that it's still snowing and the winds have picked up even more. It's cold and windy and snowing. The radio says it's a blizzard caused by the northeaster stalling off the coast, and it will last for a couple of days. A couple of days! We might get more than one day off out of this - a dream come true.
I struggle to help my father dig the car out, and I wonder how he's going to manage to get to work in a blizzard. He's got to go I hear him say, and he's taking some clothes with him in case he can't get back.
We'll all worry about him until he calls us to say he made it in safe and sound.
Carl and I decide to play with the Big Caesar Roman galley he got for Christmas. We use the Encyclopedia for Children as land, the bare tile floor of our bedroom will be the ocean. My Robin Hood knights will battle the Romans and try and capture the galley, in a bizarre battle that never could have happened in real life. Carl and his army win the day; my knights are no match for the legions of Rome.
The snow isn't letting up and the winds are howling and making more and more drifts. When I can get outside again I'll have to dig out the driveway once more.
We do get outside for a while and try to make a snow man, but it's no use, the weather isn't cooperating. Back inside and Campbell's Chicken Noodle soup and hot chocolate.
Carl and I will play Mouse Trap and Stratego, and I'll set up a Civil War battle with my Marx Blue and Gray toy soldiers.
The day is bliss, and the weather isn't getting any better, so we can go to sleep pretty much knowing that there won't be any school on Tuesday either.
Tuesday morning it's still snowing, but it's not as windy, but there is no school! A four day weekend, and it's snowing and we've got another day all to ourselves.
The snow begins to let up, and we can get out and enjoy it. It's one of those snows that leaves a thick crust on the top layer, and we try to walk across the side yard without punching through it. You take a few steps, and then the snow cracks, and your boot is down in the soft powdery stuff, and your feet are getting soaked.
We make a snow man with our neighbors Susie and Paul Avis, and try sledding down some of the larger drifts in the yard. Not as fun as Chestnut Hill, but it's too difficult to get over there right now.
Carl and I spend some of the afternoon over at the Avis house playing with Paul and Susie and their Play-doh fun factory, extruding clay bricks and other shapes.
The sky begins to clear and the winds start to die down, and we hope the roads aren't cleared enough for school to re-open tomorrow.
Our luck runs out, and school isn't closed on Wednesday morning.
It was a great run though, four days off in the middle of January watching the snow fall and listening to the wind howl.
Such joy, such pleasure.
Such warmth in all that cold.

Ringing In Another Year

2009-04-10T09:19:00.002-04:00

So we bang our pots and pans and ring our bells and shake the noise makers. Say goodbye to 1963. We heard a dream and the reports of an assassin's rifle and the year ended in sorrow and in fear.
We heard a lot in 1963.
What's to come in 1964?
What will we hear?
The sounds of marching in the street, of black and white voices crying out for an end to hate and war and poverty?
Hands clenched in fists of rage and in a V asking for peace.
Fingers holding draft cards burning, and bras too.
The young and the old, their voices rising as they take to the streets looking for justice.
Will shots ring out, will bombs explode, killing people because of the color of their skin or the ideas in their heads?
Shall we dance to the sounds of a new beat coming from a distant shore, and will Elvis be King once more?
The music of Motown and Philly and the scene from California, bands in suits and pointy shoes and girls with big hair.
And what to hold on to - the same old red, white and blue? The myths and the legends, the outright lies and half-truths taught to us in school?
Do we hold on to childhood or can we still be safe in the arms of Captain Kangaroo and Sally Starr?
What will we see on the evening news, and will we see the truth after all or will we cling to that which is wrong but is safe, or will we turn over the rocks and watch the bugs squirm.
What will the children hear and say in this year of 1964?
Will we hear the right things, or will it all be muffled by the sound of helicopters and napalm falling on the jungles and villages of Vietnam?
Happy New Year?
I wonder.

Christmas 1963

2009-04-03T11:30:00.007-04:00

I couldn't wait for Christmas morning. Because of my brother's snooping I knew I was going to get the Marx Civil War play set, and I was getting anxious. Why did he have to tell me, anyway? The anticipation was killing me. I'd have to try and concentrate on other things.
It looked like we were going to have a white Christmas, 'cause it snowed a day or so before, but no such luck; a cold rain was coming for Christmas Eve night. It didn't hurt our usual Christmas traditions. The scraggly tree, watching Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol and the Bell Telephone specials with the Beaton Marionettes. I had to watch "'Twas The Night Before Christmas" and the "Nativity" every year.
Our family and friends will file in and out of our little house just like every year, filling our home with laughter and good cheer. Mom has painted the picture window again, and this year it's the manger scene.

Me,Carl and our neighbors Paul and Susie Avis in front of our Christmas card wall in 1963.

Our house is full of Christmas Spirit, but there's an empty place where my dog Whee-Zee once was. No nap on the living room floor together this year.
Carl and I will be sleeping upstairs in our new bedroom. No excuses about the noise keeping us awake.
Mom and I watch the Christmas tree lights in the darkened living room after most of our guests have gone, reliving our first Christmas Eve together.
It's a little tough for me to go to sleep at first, the excitement is just too much knowing that soon the Yanks and the Rebs will be in my hot little hands, but eventually I drift off.
Christmas morning comes quickly, and Carl and I are awake by six, but we wait until seven to go downstairs. We get our parents and our little sister up and start the unwrapping.
There it is in a bunch of small boxes- the Marx Blue and Gray Centennial Civil War play set! Cannons and soldiers and cavalry. The stone bridge like the one at Antietam, and a Southern mansion and wagons and everything! It even has General Grant and Robert E. Lee, and the new Centennial figures that Paul LaPann's set doesn't have. I'm too excited! I can't wait to start setting up the troops down in the basement. I'll have to call Steve Kay later on to see if he can come over and do battle.
But there are other cool toys this year.
I unwrap a long box to reveal the Remco Barracuda nuclear submarine. It's got a clear plastic top so you can see inside. There's a nuclear reactor that glows red when the sub is moving across the floor. You can remove the top and put the crew in the different compartments. The bulkheads can be moved around so you can change the layout of the sub's interior. Missiles fire from it as it moves, and you can fire the forward torpedoes. It's simply amazing.
I also get the Milton Bradley Dogfight World War I air battle game, and Stratego too.
Carl gets the Roman Big Caesar warship. It moves across the floor a little at a time. The oars move and then the ship does. It is too cool. We can have bizarre sea battles between the past and the future up in our room.
Carl also gets the wacky Mouse Trap game. It's a Rube Goldberg type of contraption. The game itself isn't all that exciting, but watching the mouse trap go into action is a barrel of laughs.
My sister gets little girl toys that don't really interest us. She's not even two years old yet, and it's all a bit overwhelming for her. She seems more interested in tearing up the wrapping paper than the gifts themselves.
It's a great Christmas full of amazing toys, and even though my brother kind of spoiled it a little, I'm having a great holiday.
We get more snow over the holiday, and a big storm comes right on New Year's Day, so we get to go sledding down Chestnut Hill before going back to school.
I'm twelve years old now and next year will be a new challenge. I'll be heading towards my teenage years and I'm not sure I want to give up the joys of being a little kid yet. Pretty soon I'll have to go to the new school that's rising up in the fields behind my house, and my safe and comfortable world in Woodbury Heights Elementary will be over.
I can see Gateway Regional High School from my bedroom window.
I wish I could see more than that.

Christmas Secrets Unveiled

2009-03-11T13:06:00.003-04:00

My brother is eight years old now, and I don't think he believes in Santa anymore. He tells me he knows where Mom and Dad are hiding some of our presents. He's a spoilsport, and I tell him I don't want to know, I want to be surprised. Carl taunts me by constantly telling me he knows what I'm getting, and I try not to listen to him.
My brother is driving me crazy. I know he knows something and it must be pretty good, 'cause the smirk on his face is a pretty evil one.
Alright, I give in, I can't take it anymore. "Show me," I tell him.
I can't believe it but the presents he's found are in the new extra room across from ours. They're not even wrapped yet. They're hidden in plain view. My parents are clever, I think, but not clever enough for an eight year old snoop like Carl.
There's a small group of boxes that are un-marked, and Carl tells me to look inside one of them.
As I pull open the cardboard flap I notice the feint smell of smoke. These boxes smell like they've been in a fire. Inside I see the unmistakable signs of Marx toy soldiers! The little bags that contain the men and accessories are in there! One of the bags reads Confederates, so I know now that I'm actually getting the Marx Civil War play set this year! I tear myself away from the boxes. So the toy store at the Mart was able to save the toys but not the box it came in. I'm not going to complain. My Civil War set is going to smell like it just came out of a battle.
Now I can't stop thinking about Christmas morning and how I'm gonna have to act surprised. I have to resist the urge to go back into the spare room and peek some more.
I'm thinking.
"Did we put the boxes back just like they were?"
"Will Mom and Dad notice that some of the flaps have been opened?"
One last check and it looks like we put everything back like it was.
A few days later I go back in to look again, and the boxes are gone.
Has Mom found out we were looking? Where did she take them?
Did my wise-guy brother get caught in there?
Nothing is said that night at dinner, so it's a mystery to me.
Carl swears he knows nothing. He's not smirking when he tells me so I guess I believe him.
It's better off not knowing, I think.
It' better off being surprised.
My brother has other ideas.
He likes to torture me, I swear.

November to December 1963

2009-03-09T10:14:00.003-04:00

Thanksgiving doesn't seem as joyful this year. It's only been a week since President Kennedy was killed, and the sorrow continues. I don't feel as sad as some. I'm only eleven years old; I'm shocked that this could happen, but life goes on for me. The evening news programs won't let us forget anyway. Every night they bring up something to talk about the assassination. Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. Cubans and the CIA. Some people are starting to say that President Kennedy was killed by our own government because he was going to pull out of Vietnam. They also claim that it may have been Castro trying to get even for the Bay of Pigs invasion and for trying to assassinate him. On and on, night after night we hear more and more rumors. We see pictures of Lee Harvey Oswald holding his rifle and the stories of him living in Russia and his service in the Marines.
Jack Ruby is a mystery to everyone. No one can figure out why he killed Oswald. The rumors continue to spread, and Jack Ruby is accused of killing Oswald to help cover up a conspiracy.
Lyndon Johnson is now our president. He's a scary-looking guy with that Texas accent. He wears those silly-looking small cowboy hats like the one the Dallas police were wearing. I'm not sure I'm going to like Lyndon Johnson. He looks and sounds kinda sneaky. Maybe I'm wrong and maybe he'll be a good president. At least he's not that creepy Richard Nixon who used to be Vice-President.
It's time to think of Christmas. There are so many cool toys to ask for. Of course I'm still hoping to get the Marx Civil War play set this year. Soon I'll be twelve years old and my parents might think I'll be too old for toy soldiers anymore. Remco has a motorized nuclear submarine and that really catches my interest. I think I'll ask for that as well, and also the new Milton Bradley World War I airplane game called Dogfight.
I've seen all of these toys on the commercials on TV. I've also gotten to see them at the Atlantic Thrift Center just down the road over in Deptford. The Atlantic Thrift Center is a big rambling building filled with booths. It's like the Berlin Farmer's Market, but a little less like a flea market. A lot of people just call it "The Mart". A big night out on the weekend is going shopping at "The Mart".
The toy store there has the Marx Civil War set, and I stare at it every time we go shopping there. I'm hoping this is the year my dream comes true.
A few weeks before Christmas there's a big fire at The Mart. It doesn't burn down, but there's a lot of damage to the building. The stores that are remaining have big sales at really reduced prices, so my chances of getting the Civil War set are getting better, unless they were all burned up in the fire.
I don't know how my parents are going to keep our presents a secret this year. Carl and I have a bedroom upstairs. Upstairs used to be the attic, but now it's been converted into our bedroom, an extra room and a big closet at the top of the stairs. I thought we were going to get our own bathroom, but Mom wanted a big closet, so it's up and down the stairs for Carl and me.
We got some storage areas inside the walls of the upstairs. They run the entire length of the house, and for Carl and me they become mine shafts and escape routes out of prisoner of war camps. Mom calls them coobie holes.
One whole wall is a peg board, and we can put hooks into it and hang things up. We take all of our cap pistols and air guns and our training rifles and put them up on the wall. Later on we'll be allowed to display the German officer's sword that Dad brought home from the war.
From our bedroom window we can watch Gateway Regional High School going up in Mr. Rizzuto's old field. I miss all of the trees and I can't get used to the chain link fence at the end of our yard.
When summer comes we'll be getting an air-conditioner because it will get too hot on the second floor. We've also got our own TV, so when school is out I can stay up all night watching old movies.
Our sister Cheryl is getting our old room. Our cowboy wallpaper will be covered up, and what was once the den of two little boys and a dog and bunk beds will give way to dolls and tea parties and all things female.
Yeah, Christmas is coming and I won't lie in bed listening to my parents climb the attic stairs from my perch in the top bunk anymore.
Just where will they hide everything anyway?

Four Long Days

2009-02-28T13:21:00.014-05:00

It was a day in November.
A warm day in November.
They let us out early from school.
The teachers were somber.
Some teachers were crying.
I walked home thinking,
“How could this be?”
“How could this be?”
It’s on the TV.
It’s all that is on TV.

Questions.
Did he do it on his own, or were others involved?
A policeman named Tibbet is dead.
The president is dead.

Lyndon Johnson, right hand raised,

Taking the oath of office on the plane.
A book depository in Dallas.
Three shots fired.
From the sixth floor.
A place called Dealey Plaza.
A grassy knoll, people pointing, people crying.
Lee Harvey Oswald with a swollen eye.
“I’m just a patsy,” he says.
Fair play for Cuba, and living in Russia,
And a sharpshooter in the marines.
It’s on the TV.
It’s all that is on TV.
Was it Castro getting even?
Lee Harvey Oswald over and over again.
The Dallas schoolbook depository.
Three shots fired.
From the sixth floor.
Our president is dead.
His life played over and over on TV.
It’s all that is on TV.
The days move in slow motion.
Is it OK to go out and play?
It’s on TV.
It’s all that is on TV.
Lee Harvey Oswald moved to Russia.
He came back with a Russian wife.
“I didn’t shoot anybody,” he says.
Over and over the newsmen ask the same questions.
Did Oswald act on his own?
Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of the Dallas jail.
A man leaps forward and a shot is fired.
The policeman in the cowboy hat grimacing.
People shuffling.
People struggling.
Lee Harvey Oswald falling to the ground.
Jack Ruby.
Lee Harvey Oswald is dead.
Jack Ruby’s life played over and over on TV.
It’s all that is on TV.
The newsmen ask the questions over and over again.
Jack Ruby?

No school on Monday.
A funeral on Monday.
President Kennedy’s funeral.
Black and white images on the TV.
The drums beating.
The horses’ hooves on the pavement.
A caisson.

A flag-draped coffin.
The drums beating.
The horses’ hooves on the pavement.
A rider-less horse,
Boots in the stirrups facing the wrong way.
The drums beating.
The horses’ hooves on the pavement.
A little boy saluting.

The drums beating.
A plaza in Dallas.
Three shots fired.
On a warm day in November.

Autumn Bliss

2009-02-28T10:08:00.000-05:00

The warmth of summer continued into the school year. I was able to ride my bike over to Saint Margaret’s almost every day. Beautiful warm late summer days. Lots of Team Tag in the parking lot. I had been with most of my classmates for a long time now and the bonds of friendship were growing stronger. Saint Margaret’s was our own little world, and we were Sixth Graders now, practically kings of the roost. Mrs. Carey had a strong influence on us, and under her guidance we were trying to become more mature little ladies and gentlemen.
Maybe in the classroom we were trying to be mature, but outside it was Team Tag and bike riding and baseball. For Steve Kay and me it was World War II in his basement and whatever war we wished outside in his yard. Our battles would swirl around the Episcopal Church and on into the woods along Academy Avenue, and the sounds of the war in the deserts of North Africa rose up from the cellar. Steve had a big black Newfoundland dog named Thor who welcomed me as one of the family, helping to ease the sting of losing my beloved boxer, Whee-Zee.
October developed into a grand Indian Summer, with warm and sunny days, followed by cool, crisp evenings. The perfect time of year. Even raking leaves isn’t so bad in this kind of weather.
It’s getting close to Halloween, so I’m wondering if the Communists have something up their sleeve again this year. Will they set up missiles somewhere else close to us, or will they start some new trouble over in Berlin again?
This year I’m starting to feel like I’m getting too old for Halloween. I’m having trouble getting too excited about it all. I actually get invited to a Halloween party by one of the girls in my class. A party with boys and girls together. Not cousins or neighbors, but girls.
I decide to go to the party in that Raggedy Ann costume my mother made because no one in my class ever saw me wear it. It covers your whole body, and no one will suspect a boy coming dressed as a girl’s doll. It works, nobody guesses it’s me, and when I take the mask off I get a good laugh from everyone. They play music at the party and we’re encouraged to dance. I’m reluctant to, and I kind of hang back at the wall. One of the girls convinces me to try, and I do, but I’m awkward at it. I love music, but I’ve got no rhythm. Needless to say, I do not sweep the girls off their feet. I’m embarrassed by my clumsiness, so I retreat further away from my true feelings about girls my age.
The Russians and the Cubans don’t make any trouble this October, and I decide I’ll make one last Halloween effort. I decide to wear my Dad’s army shirt and the helmet Uncle Pat got me. I’m going to be Sgt. Fury from the Marvel comic book that came out this year. It’s an easy costume to throw together, and I like all things military, so I have some fun running around the neighborhood one last time.
The problems in our country and around the world seem to melt away this fall. There are no worries for us here in Woodbury Heights. Vietnam, Cuba, Berlin and Birmingham don’t seem to matter right now. Warm weather and strong friendships. We’re safe and happy in our town and our country.
The days of October and Indian Summer fade. Let’s hope this warm feeling lasts on into November.

On A Sunday Morning

2009-02-26T16:46:00.003-05:00

I don’t go to Sunday school at the Presbyterian church anymore. I’d rather not if you please. I’m an American so I have the right to believe what I want to believe.
I say that pledge in school and I believe in it. I think every kid in America believes it. Adults must believe it too, don’t you think? Didn’t they recite the pledge when they went to school?
“...one nation, under God, indivisible.....”
It’s Sunday, September 15, 1963, and in the basement of the Presbyterian Church another Sunday school is in session. My friend Billy Reim is probably there earning yet another perfect attendance badge. He believes. He has a right to believe.
Thousands, maybe millions of kids all over America are sitting in Sunday school this day in September.
They all have a right to believe.
Four young girls in Birmingham Alabama went to Sunday school today. They went to Sunday school at the Baptist Church on 16th Street. They were going for their lesson called, “The Love That Forgives”.
Carol Denise McNair, Cynthia Diane Wesley, Carole Rosamond Robertson and Addie Mae Collins were entering the Baptist Church at 10:22 in the morning. They believed.
As they entered the church 122 sticks of dynamite exploded, killing them and injuring several others.
The dynamite was planted by four men.
The men were white.
Carol Denise, Cynthia Diane, Carole Rosamond and Addie Mae were black.
They were killed because a lot of black Americans were standing up for what we all pledged allegiance to, for what all Americans have a right to.
122 sticks of dynamite.
Planted by four white men.
Men who believed that freedom was meant for some but not for others.
Four young girls killed.
On their way to Sunday school.
Because someone didn’t like the color of their skin.
Because everyone does not believe.
“with liberty and justice for all.”

September 1963 - The "Other" Sixth Grade

2009-02-23T15:35:00.005-05:00

Front Row L to R: Laura Alloway, Kurt Bronum, Carol Nelson, Fran Hoffman, Patti Burgess, John Schmidt, Carla Frey. Middle Row L to R: Patty Sullivan, Mark Lightcap, Stanley Alloway, Steve Erich, Vince Fitzgerald, Patti McShane, Mr. Smith. Back Row L to R: Billy Reim, John Steinle, Joanie Brucker, Randy Voldish, Dave Hampel. Missing: Rochelle Gramenzi, Sheron Wakely, Bill Hill.

There was always the "other" grade. Kids you knew and were your own age, but you didn't share the same teacher or the same classroom experiences. Some of them you knew from church or Cub Scouts or Brownies, and some of them were your neighbors. You just didn't get to know them as well as the kids you shared each and every day with.
I knew Mark Lightcap and Sheron Wakely from Kindergarden. We shared the very first days of school together. I'm not sure if they were moved into the "other" grades right after Kindergarden or not. I would get to know Billy Reim from Sunday School. Billy went every Sunday year after year. I was a sometimes Sunday School student. Billy had rows of yearly attendance pins on his suitcoat, I had two.
Rochelle Gramenzi was new in town. A pretty girl like Joyce and Sheila with the added allure of an exotic name. Too intimidating for a shy goofball like me.
Patty Burgess lived a few houses down from me on Walnut Avenue, right next door to the Lucas house. I never really knew her even though we lived close to each other.
I would pass Randy Voldish's house on Glassboro Road on my way to school. We talked to each other and would be friends for a while in high school. We shared the same passion for military history, especially World War II.
Kurt Bronum's mom was my Den Mother in Cub Scouts, so I had been to his house many times.
Patty Sullivan lived next door to my friends the Maddens on Glenwood Avenue, so I knew her pretty well. She was the first girl my own age that I kissed. It was up on Freund's Cliff. How I convinced her to let me to I can't remember, but it was quick and on the lips.
I never got to know the Alloways. They were quiet, and so was Fran Hoffman. Carol Nelson had been in my Fifth Grade class with Mrs. Nolte and now she had been moved into the "other" grade. Why? Who knows.
Vince Fitzgerald and I would pal around in Junior High school, Vince being a friend of my best pal, Steve Kay.
I never really knew Joanie Brucker at all, and Carla Frey and Patti McShane were cute girls I wish I had known.
John Steinle and I would end up in the National Honor Society in high school.
I'd sing in a rock band very briefly in high school and Steve Erich would play the sax in our group.
John Schmidt and I played sandlot baseball together, and Dave Hampel, well he was one-of-a-kind.
Their teacher Mr. Smith, did not have a very good reputation around the school. He was kind of creepy-looking. A bit sinister in appearance, he was dark and always looked like he needed a shave. I always felt like he'd fit right in living with my spooky neighbor Mrs. Price. What he was really like I have no idea, but I'm glad I'm in Mrs. Carey's class.
The "other" Sixth Grade. Some I knew well, others I knew not. All of them trying to get through another year of school in Woodbury Heights, New Jersey.

September 1963 - The Sixth Grade

2009-02-22T10:17:00.006-05:00

I don’t know what to expect this year in school. Mrs. Carey is unknown to us, but most of us are relieved that we don’t have Mr. Smith. When I walk into class and see Mrs. Carey for the first time I get kinda nervous, because she looks pretty stern. Mrs. Carey looks like she’s all business, and she resembles that designer in Hollywood, you know, Edith Head.
Mrs. Carey is all business at first. She treats us more like adults than any of our previous teachers, and she expects us to behave accordingly. We work hard in class, and we have more homework than ever before too. My first marking period isn’t quite the cake-walk Fifth Grade was, and I end up with more B’s than A’s.
After a while Mrs. Carey begins to lighten up, and we see that she’s really a nice lady behind all that seriousness, and she has a genuine desire to see us all do well. I begin to relax and my grades get better.

Front Row L to R: Sue Burns, Bob Erich, Diana Gabel, Janice Martin, Mary Lou Louis, Paul LaPann, Christine Lawrence. Center Row L to R: Debbie Pryzwara, Me, Nancy Fleisch, Don Vanneman, Lora Carter, Greg Jones, Patsy Mullin, Steve Kay, Ann Trocolli, Mrs. Carey. Back Row L to R: Max Reihmann, Judy Hampton, Billy Hills, Joyce Hoefers, Tommy Moore, Richie Hearn, Sheila McLaughlin, Jimmy Matsuk, Linda Hankin, Bradley Lloyd

The Saint Margaret’s Catholic School is a lot newer than our old public school building. It’s got modern desks and it’s ground level. It doesn’t have the same character as the old elementary school, but we’re kind of in our own world here, so it’s kinda cool. Cool? Yeah, we’re using new words now to describe things that are really neat. Cool, groovy and hip are the words being used now, and we embrace them.
There’s not much of a playground here at Saint Margaret’s. Mostly a big paved parking lot. We play huge games of Team Tag every morning, boys against the girls, and even the kids from the “other” Sixth Grade join in. I still try to catch Sue Burns, but if somebody else gets her I go after Sheila or Ann or even Patty McShane from the “other” class.
It’s a longer walk or bike ride to school this year, but I hook up with Steve Kay along the way, so the trip goes by quickly. I can walk home with a lot of the guys from class part of the way, so I’m no longer alone on the trail.
The trek to school is the same but different, and next year it will be shorter, since Gateway Regional High School will be right behind my house. I still like to stand on the banks of the lake and ponder and skip stones. How much things have changed from the time one of the Goss brothers tried to steal my bike by throwing me in the lake, and I can still feel the sting of embarrassment from Joyce ducking me under the water. I stare out at the raft, and I can’t wait for summer because next year I’ll be swimming out to it and I’ll be able to come to the lake on my own. Yeah, lots of changes this year, things are gonna be different.
I’m wishing one thing hadn’t changed though. It’s when I look up Walnut Ave and all I see is an empty driveway instead of that ugly brown boxer waiting for me to come home....

Summer's End,1963

2009-02-21T11:01:00.002-05:00

Summer is winding down, and I must face the inevitable. I and everyone else must endure the torture of shopping for school clothes on a hot day in August. The annual trip to Ernie’s Shoe Post, and I hope I can get a pair of Hush Puppies in addition to the usual black dress shoes I always get.
What a summer. The Gettysburg battlefield still fresh in my memory, and Saturday afternoons at the Wood Theatre, sitting in the dark staring up at the big screen.
Carl and I rode in another Fourth of July parade with Uncle Marshal. This year he drove an old station wagon type of car. It had wooden bench seats, and we sat in the back dressed in our red, white and blue and our plastic straw hats, waving at the crowds. Uncle Marsh let me ride with him again in the big Wooodbury Parade too.
I’m watching the construction going on behind our house. It began with trees in the woods being cut down to make way for the chain-link fence going up. I can’t go into the woods anymore, I’m blocked out-Mr. Rizzuto has sold the land and now the new high school is going up. The land has been cleared and the fields torn up by heavy bulldozers, and now I’m watching the foundations being poured. I won’t go to Woodbury High School. The Seventh and Eighth Grades won’t be part of elementary school. They call it Junior High School now, and I’ll be able to walk there in a few minutes. I’m thinking, “finally I can come home for lunch.”
I walk over to the school to see who my Sixth Grade teacher will be. Someone named Mrs. Carey. I don’t know anything about her, but I’m glad I won’t have Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith is a creepy-looking guy who looks like he’d fit right in living with Mrs. Price. I’ll be with most of all my old classmates, and Max Reimann will be back with us from the “other” grade. It will be good to have him back.
It’s funny, but this year I’m thinking more about seeing the girls again. Sue Burns and Joyce Hoefers and Sheila McLaughlin are on my mind. Girls? I’m thinking about girls? I’m not even twelve years old yet and I’m thinking about girls. I didn’t think that happened until you turned thirteen. I can’t wait for Team Tag in the playground, and a chance to capture and guard Sue Burns again.
We won’t be in the old school this year. The Sixth Grade will have classes in the Saint Margaret’s Catholic School building on the other side of town while they build a new addition onto the old school. A longer walk for me. I’ll go down Glassboro Road to Elm Avenue and cross at the traffic light. Up Elm past the fire house and the 7-11 and across the railroad track. Past Sheron Wakley’s house and the Tierney house. Past the Presbyterian Church and on by Paul LaPann’s house and up to Saint Margaret’s. When the weather is warm I’ll ride my black Rixe bicycle. On days when Paul asks me to come over, we can head right to his house directly from school. I can go right to Steve Kay’s house on the way home too. Mom has learned to drive, so in bad weather I’ve got a ride. No more wondering which neighbor can give me a lift to school.
What a year for comic books. This summer I spent a lot of time reading the Fantastic Four, and they gave that Spider Man character his own comic too. I save up my chore money and soda bottle deposit money and get a subscription. I love the way Steve Ditko draws. Dark and moody, and the people aren’t as pretty as in all the other comics. It’s a raw style that fascinates me. There’s another new Marvel character called Iron Man, and he’s fighting the Communists in Vietnam, the only comic book that even acknowledges that that war is going on. Just before school starts Marvel comes out with another exciting title, the X-Men, a comic about teen-aged mutants led by a bald older mutant. It’s wild and out there and drawn by the great Jack Kirby, and I subscribe to that one too. Uncle Pat continues to provide me with more and more comic books he finds at the dump, and my pile grows and grows.
Steve Kay and I will still play war. It’s getting harder to convince Paul LaPann and Billy Hills and Tommy Moore to join in. They’re more interested in sports now, so Steve and I recruit younger boys and girls into our “armies”. Steve and I build a desert in his basement and buy Airfix HO gauge soldiers and re-create the battles in North Africa during World War II. Steve is Montgomery and I’m Rommel, the Desert Fox.
This year will be totally different, yet still the same. I’ll be getting a new bedroom upstairs soon. I’ll be going to school in a strange building, but with old friends in a different part of town.
Comic books and toy soldiers and soon I’ll be twelve years old and I’ll have to start thinking about being a teenager.
There’s a chain-link fence at the end of my yard and a new school going up right behind me and I’ll be going there next year with kids I’ve never even seen.
Things are moving, things are spinning around.
Did I mention I’m thinking about girls?
Where’d that come from?

August 28, 1963

2009-02-19T23:54:00.003-05:00

People have gathered on this day in August. They’ve come to Washington in the hundreds of thousands. Black Americans mostly, but white faces too. There they gather at the Lincoln Memorial, stretching out to the Washington Monument and beyond. I’m watching it on TV, this March For Jobs and Freedom they call it.
Celebrities are there, black and white. Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Mahalia Jackson sing songs.
Speeches and prayers.
They are asking for freedom and equality, something I thought all Americans already had, at least that’s what they tell us in school.
The people are tired of the beatings and the hatred. They ask for the right to fair play and the right to earn a living wage. They ask for hope.
Speeches and prayers.
Thousands and thousands I see on the television, an ocean of people, black and white.
One speech is remembered more than all the others.
One man whose voice rises above all the others.
He calls out to America to live up to its promise.
He dreams a dream and asks us all to share in it.
He hopes for a world where there will be hope.
He cries out to put an end to hatred and suffering.
He asks us all to love one another and put aside our differences.
He dreams a dream.
I listen to Dr. King’s eloquent speech.
It will take a few more years before I hear it.
Before America hears it.

Reel Adventure

2009-02-14T10:39:00.004-05:00

Sitting in the Wood Theatre on a hot summer afternoon. The musty air conditioning smell mixed with popcorn and candy. Your feet sticking to the floor. Cartoons and coming attractions and finally the main feature, and it's a day of bliss. Bathed in the glow from the movie, clutching boxes of Dots,Black Crows and Root Beer Barrels. I like to sit towards the back of the theatre, under the balcony just in case there's too many kids who "accidentally" spill something.
There always seems to be a Jerry Lewis movie, even though he's beginning to look too old to keep playing the same old part. This year it's "The Nutty Professor", his version of the Jekyll and Hyde story. He's his old nerdy self as the professor who is trying to get the attention of the girl he loves and he does that by concocting a potion that turns him into a greasy-haired smarmy ladies man named Buddy Love. Buddy Love is a thinly-veiled version of Jerry's heroes Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, and he just looks even sillier. I go to see it, but I'm not impressed.
Hardly a summer goes by when there's not some sword and sandal epic. Steve Reeves as Hercules or the Son of Spartacus. "Ben-Hur" and Spartacus himself played to frantic perfection by Kirk Douglas.
This summer we get "Jason and the Argonauts", and stop motion special effects by Ray Harryhausen. It's not a great movie, but it's fun and there's a lot of adventure. My favorite part is when the teeth of the Hydra are sown by the bad guy and the skeleton warriors pop up out of the ground and attack Jason and his men. Scary and exciting all at the same time.
My favorite family night movie is "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World". A wild and wacky tale with almost every comedian and comic actor known at that time, all searching for a suitcase full of money buried under a big W in California. It's a laugh-a-minute riot with Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett trying to fly a plane when the pilot gets knocked out, and Sid Caesar and Edie Adams trying to get out of the basement of a hardware store they're locked in. Dick Shawn trying to come to the aid of his blustery mother Ethel Merman, and Jonathan Winters destroying a gas station with his bare hands. We'll talk about this movie all summer.
My favorite movie of the summer of 1963 is of course, a war movie. Dad takes us to the drive-in to see "The Great Escape", the ultimate prisoner of war film of all time. Just like a "Mad,Mad,Mad,Mad World" it has a star-studded cast and that exciting motorcycle chase featuring tough-guy Steve McQueen. It's a movie I never forget and one I will watch over and over and over again.
And I can't forget the Late Show on TV. I don't know who's programming the movies in Philly, but I'm grateful for the showing of "Tarzan and His Mate" and putting on the one with the nudity left in it, sitting in the dark with my mouth wide open in disbelief. They also show the animated version of "Animal Farm" and Marx Brothers movies and W.C. Fields and another summer they show "Lord of the Flies" and a German war movie called "The Bridge" about hastily recruited young boys who end up defending their town against the Americans. Thanks, Late Show guys.
My love of movies will continue to grow this summer of 1963.
Sitting in the dark looking up at the silver screen, or staying up late at night in the glow of the tube.
Movies...

Down The Shore

2009-02-13T12:53:00.009-05:00

Beach Bums: Mrs. Avis and Cheryl,Me,Susie,Carl,Paul and Dad. Mom is taking the picture.

Everybody in South Jersey goes "down the shore" in the summer. Going "down the shore" means going to the beach. When you're "down the shore" you go to the beach, but you're always "down the shore".
We weren't regular shore-goers, at least not yet. Dad had taken me to Atlantic City when I was young. I remember going into big locker rooms where you left your clothes, and walking what seemed like miles to get to the beach. Dad covered me up in sand, and I didn't like that very much.
Dad had friends that lived in Brigantine and we visited them once and a while. They had a Basset hound named Junior, and it was always fun to go visit him. Brigantine was a surprise to me. I never expected towns down the shore to look like Woodbury Heights with lawns and sidewalks. I figured seashore towns would just be surrounded by sand dunes and marshes and the bay and all, so Brigantine really amazed me.
We stayed at a cottage in Avalon once too. A cedar shingled affair surrounded by reeds outside of town. Lots of bugs.
I never saw the point of going down the shore. We had the lake, and no bugs and it was just down the street, so what was the point of driving somewhere for over an hour when I could just hop on my bike and take a swim in only a few minutes?
This summer we would trek "down the shore" like everybody else.
Aunt Sis and Uncle Dan bought a house on the border between Strathmere and Sea Isle City.

Aunt Sis and Uncle Dan's house at Whale Beach

After all the storms and hurricanes between 1960 and '62 a lot of people were anxious to sell, so homes on or near the beach were pretty reasonable. Sea Isle city wasn't too well known, so property was even cheaper.
There were inexpensive places to rent right down the street from Aunt Sis and Uncle Dan, so Mom and Dad decided to rent one for a week. Mrs. Avis and Susie and Paul were coming with us as well.
So in August of 1963 we were heading down the shore for a week to stay on the second floor of a duplex just across the street from the ocean. Whale Beach it's called, and it's not a very developed place like Atlantic City or Wildwood or Cape May. There aren't any lifeguards or boardwalk, just a lot of sand and the ocean. Behind the place we're staying in is some kind of marshy area, and it's pretty rough. Aunt Sis and Uncle Dan's place has well water and boy does that water smell bad. The place smells like a swamp from the horrible well water they have to use. At first I try and make the best of it, and I figure going swimming every day won't be so bad. Well, I'm wrong. The ocean is cold most of the time, and you have to go out a ways to get beyond the shallows to be able to swim. I'm not too fond of salt water, and what's that going around my legs? There aren't even any decent sea shells to find.
Sand and sun and the ocean and that's it. Nothing else to do and nowhere else to go. The sand seems to get into everything, and I can't get used to that smell of brine and marshland and fish. After two days of this I can't wait to leave. There isn't much to do in Sea Isle City either. It's a small shore town, a low key place, and most people head for Wildwood for excitement. Dad's going to take us there towards the end of the week, a big blast before heading home. I could use that big blast after the third day.
I go crabbing with Dad and Carl and Paul. Big mistake. Throwing crab traps into the water and waiting in the sun is about as exciting as watching grass grow. It's hot and smelly from the bait, and there is absolutely nothing else to do. What's more, I hate the way crabs smell and I can't stand the way they taste. Every summer Mrs. Avis cooks crabs and spaghetti, and a more vile thing to do to perfectly good pasta I'll never understand. To me crabs taste the way they smell, and they smell like garbage. So here I am standing out in the hot sun watching crab traps. Not the way I want to spend the last month of summer I tell you. Dad makes a big mistake and doesn't put sun lotion on. The reflection from the water burns his legs and feet, and he's in a lot of pain at the end of the day. The adults pig out on crabs that evening, and I have to go and walk on the beach in order to breathe. How can anybody eat that stuff?
Another thing I don't like about this place is it's damp at night. I have trouble sleeping because everything feels wet. The sheets and pillowcases, the mattresses and I feel wet. There isn't any air-conditioning. We don't have it at home either, but we only have regular humidity, nothing like this. I listen to the ocean to try and lull myself to sleep. I sleep but not comfortably, and I wake up feeling wet.
Day after day of sand and sun and ocean smells. I miss the lake and my friend Steve Kay and the woods and the grass. Four days of this madness and I'm ready to go home.
Friday night and our trip to the Wildwood boardwalk can't come soon enough for me.
I like the boardwalk in Wildwood. I'm not too good on most of the rides though, because my fear of heights prevent me from enjoying what most people consider the really "good" ones. I try to ride a roller coaster type thing, but my stomach can't take it, so I don't try any more. The Fun House and the Horror House are really good, and we go into a joke and magic shop to buy fake vomit and melted popsicles and fake ice cubes with flies in them. This makes up for all the boredom during the week. If we're gonna go down the shore, why can't we stay here where there's stuff to do?
We have a blast in Wildwood, and our night on the boardwalk is the highlight of the week.
Saturday we start packing up and get ready to leave in the afternoon. I can't wait to get home and away from the smell and the sand and the monotony. Woodbury Heights, here I come. Back to the lake tomorrow and swimming in fresh warm water.
Well, that's over with. A week down the shore. My parents have gotten that out of their system, once is enough for me.
But on the drive home I hear them talking about doing it again next year...

GETTYSBURG

2009-02-11T22:32:00.009-05:00

The last day of June and Dad has packed us all up in our ’63 Fairlane. This isn’t one of his “let’s get in the car and see where it takes us” days. No, this day will be special, especially for me. We’re heading for a small town in Pennsylvania where one hundred years ago the armies of the North and South ran into each other and fought for three days in the heat of the summer. Yep, we’re going to Gettysburg and I’m just about to burst with excitement.
All five of us heading deep into Pennsylvania down Route 30, the highway we all know as the White Horse Pike in South Jersey. We’re traveling towards that crossroads village just like the Northern Army did, and my mind is spinning in anticipation.
I’m going to stand on the ground where Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet and George Meade stood so long ago. I know every minute of the battle, and I can’t wait to see it all. It’s the centennial celebration so there’s going to be special presentations and speeches and re-enactors dressed in uniforms and everything.
The trip takes about three hours, an eternity for me, but then-there it is, Little Round Top and Big Round Top, and the cemetery and Devil’s Den and all the other spots on the battlefield I’ve read about. It’s a beautiful place, this little town surrounded by hills covered in rocks and boulders, and broad fields that stretch for miles. This peaceful place once shattered by war.
I’m standing on Little Round Top and I can feel the intensity of the fighting. The big rocks and boulders of Devil’s Den just like in my Civil War books at home. Lots and lots of cannons in long rows, and I make my Dad stop the car at every monument so I can get out and read them.
We go in to see the Electric Map of the battle. It’s a three-dimensional map that you sit around on bleachers, and the three days’ battle is explained to you. The troop positions and landmarks are highlighted by colored lights following the flow of the battle. Some people are probably bored out of their minds, but I’m loving every minute of it.
There’s so much to see and do that Dad and Mom decide that we’ll stay overnight. I’m going to sleep in Gettysburg. Yes!! This will be the highlight of my summer.
Thing is, my parents haven’t made any reservations, and this is the centennial celebration and all, and it looks like a major part of the population is here. We drive all over town and there doesn’t seem to be a vacancy anywhere, so it looks like we’re going to be heading out of town for the night. My Dad is determined. Somehow we find THE ONLY motel room left in Gettysburg. The five of us will have to squeeze in somehow, and the cots will pretty much fill up the room, but we’ve got a place to stay for the night.
That evening we attend a campfire presentation on the battlefield. We listen to re-enactors tell stories about the battle, and we watch demonstrations of loading muskets and cannons. This is better than I’d ever imagined.
I sleep well that night, knowing that in the morning, I can explore the battlefield even more.
It’s hot that first day of July, just like in 1863. We stand on Cemetery Ridge, at the point where Pickett’s Charge is finally stopped, and it’s a shame that such beautiful country witnessed so much pain and destruction. We travel over to where the Confederate lines were on Seminary Ridge, and I try to imagine what it was like getting ready to march across those fields in the face of all that gunfire.
Carl and I buy Civil War hats and flags, some replica Confederate money and a copy of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Dad makes a second tour for me. Another look at Little Round Top and Devil’s Den, a pass at Culp’s Hill and a last look at the rows of cannons, and we’re heading for home. We’ve got to get back to New Jersey to get ready for Carl’s birthday on the Fourth of July.
We’ll be home by early evening. As always the cool air of the woods behind our house greets us, a refreshing welcome home.
It was an exciting two days and I’ll sleep that night and dream of men in blue and gray and boulders and hills and a charge across the beautiful fields of Pennsylvania.

Look At What I Saw

2009-01-28T17:14:00.005-05:00

A hot summer night and I'm watching the Late Show on TV. My brother has fallen asleep so I'm the only one who's watching. One of my favorite things to do in the summer - watching old movies late at night, bathed in the gray-white glow of the television. Tonight it's a Tarzan movie, one I haven't seen before. It's Johnny Weissmuller, of course, he IS Tarzan, you know?

Anyway, the movie is called Tarzan and His Mate, and it's about a safari that comes into the jungle to find the elephants' grave yard and collect all the ivory there. Leading the safari is Harry Holt. He loves Jane and he's going to try and get her to come back to civilization with him. All the usual Tarzan stuff is going on, you know, the bad natives attacking the safari, wild animals and Cheetah and the Tarzan yell and all, but there's four minutes that really catch my attention.
Jane is in an evening gown that Harry Holt brought for her. She's looking all glamorous and pretty and everything, and she and Tarzan are going for a walk in the morning. They're walking on a big tree limb or a tree trunk or something that's over a pond, when suddenly Tarzan pushes Jane into the water.
Nothing unusual for Tarzan to do, but the dress catches on a branch, and lo and behold, Jane is naked! I'm not seeing things, am I? For a second I'm not too sure, but then yes - it's true, Jane is swimming underwater totally nude, and you - I mean - I can see everything! Jane is truly naked, and I'm the only one seeing it. Tarzan and Jane are swimming underwater. Jane grabs Tarzan by the shoulders and hangs on as they swim. Then she slides back and grabs Tarzan's feet and holds on as he pulls her along. They gracefully swim in a circle two times, and I can see Jane's breasts and I can see her behind, and I can see EVERYTHING, you know?
Wow!
An eleven year old boy's fantasy come true!
Jane - NAKED!
I can't take my eyes off of the screen. I'm too entranced to wake up my brother.
I can't believe it, but there it is right on TV, right in my living room.
Four minutes of jungle erotic fantasy and I'm the only one to see it.
WOW!
Ah, a warm summer night bathed in that gray-white glow.
Jane - Naked.
WOW!

In The Belly Of The Beast - Part Three

2009-01-27T13:49:00.003-05:00

We could have turned tail and ran away, but two things prevented us. If Mrs. Price really was a witch, she could have turned us all to stone or something. Then again, if we ran, she would have told our mothers what we were up to, and our mothers would have told our fathers, so we were stuck - we had to follow Mrs. Price.
Was she taking us to where she and John-John performed all of their secret rituals?
What was she going to show us, and how did she know we thought she was a witch?
As we walked along I noticed that the woods here behind Mrs. Price's house were a lot "neater" than the woods behind our house. There wasn't a lot of sticks and limbs lying on the ground. There wasn't a lot of leaves on the ground either. We were walking on a well-kept path, and so far I hadn't seen any animal heads.
When we reached a small clearing Mrs. Price stopped us and began to talk to us about stuff like mulch and compost, and taking care of trees and stuff. She told us how she and her son took all of the leaves and grass clippings and made fertilizer out of it. There were big mounds of dark soil and leaves and things, and Mrs. Price told us how plants needed organic food to grow better. We didn't know what the heck she was talking about, but she proceeded to lecture us about how to care for trees and how to clean up the woods.
She showed us a grove of bamboo growing in her woods. I was amazed at that. I thought bamboo only grew in the jungles in the South Pacific, like in all of the war movies I had seen on TV.
Then Mrs. Price showed us where she had buried some of her pets. It was a small, well-kept cemetery for a few cats and a dog.
The whole time Mrs. Price lectured us, John-John hovered around in the distance, never saying a word.
After what seemed like hours, Mrs. Price dismissed us with the promise that we would never trespass on her property again, and if we did want to walk in her woods, to please knock on her door and ask.
We scurried out of there, relieved that Mrs. Price hadn't turned us all to stone or called our parents.
I realized that Mark Gerber had pulled a fast one on me, and that he probably knew what was going on in Mrs. Price's yard all along. I'll bet you he even told her we all thought she was a witch. Yeah, I was the perfect sucker.
Mrs. Price was just an old school teacher living with her weird son, practicing some kind of all natural gardening or something.
It was kind of a let-down really. No witches' cauldron or strange altars, or secret rituals with magic spells, and no skull-lined forest floor. Nothing supernatural at all.
Just a weird old lady with peculiar habits who lived with her adult son who may or may not be "all there", and a gloomy-looking house in need of some paint and maybe some brighter light bulbs.
No Mrs. Price was not a witch after all.
But she sure was spooky.

In The Belly Of The Beast - Part Two

2009-01-24T13:51:00.002-05:00

Paul Avis, my brother Carl and I were about to cross a line. The invisible wall separating the real world from the sorcerer’s realm of Mrs. Price’s back yard. It wasn’t a yard, it was a dense stand of woods, and we had to see for ourselves if it was filled with the heads and skulls of cats and dogs. We were the Hardy Boys on another adventure, out to solve “The Mystery of Price’s Woods”, and to see for ourselves if Mrs. Price truly was a witch.
We stood in the no-man’s land of ground that was a part of Mr. Collins’ back yard, standing between the Gerber house and the woods.
We dared each other to be the first one in, but the fear and uncertainty held us back.
Finally, Paul Avis darted in and just as quickly came out, not enough time to see anything at all.
We giggled and laughed to pretend we weren’t nervous or frightened, but none of us were going in.
After a few moments we summoned up enough courage to begin entering the woods, trying not to make any noise whatsoever.
So far so good, and no signs of any dead animals yet, but we were just on the fringe, the deepest part of the woods ahead of us.
We crept forward silently, like Indians, and we could all feel our hearts beating faster and faster.

“What are you boys doing?”

The voice shattered the silence, and our instinct was to run, and we would have, but the voice called out once again.

“Don’t you boys go anywhere. You heard me. Stay right where you are.”

It was Mrs. Price herself, coming out of nowhere, and her voice was everywhere, and we froze in our tracks.

We froze out of fear, but also out of the respect we were taught to have for all adults, so we stood waiting to see what Mrs. Price had in store for us.

Mrs. Price was her usual grimy-looking self. Sweat-stained, hair askew, smudged up glasses, working gloves and all. She must have come up from out of the ground to have been able to surprise us so thoroughly, at least that’s how it seemed, and she was covered in enough dirt to make it seem possible.

She looked at us for a long time in silence, and asked us once again what we were doing on her property.

We gave her the usual reply young boys caught in the act of doing something they shouldn’t.

“Nothing, Mrs. Price. Just looking around is all.”

This was really awkward and really frightening. What was she going to do to us? Would she cast a spell on us all and make us disappear or something, or would she do that which we feared even more and call our mothers over to punish us?
She listened to our feeble excuses and stared at us a while more.

Finally, she said, “You boys think I’m a witch, don’t you?”

“Oh no, Mrs. Price, we don’t believe that,” we lied, “We never said you were a witch.”

“I know that’s what you boys think,” she said. She turned away from us and pointed towards the deepest part of the woods.

She turned back and looked us straight in the eyes, and said,

“Come with me boys, I’ve got something to show you.”

In The Belly Of The Beast - Part One

2009-01-22T23:49:00.004-05:00

I’ve already said that my neighbor Mrs. Price was pretty weird. Mrs. Price's house could hardly be seen, even when you walked past it in broad daylight. She and her son John were a mystery to us. We called John Price John-John: a childish name, because it seemed odd to us that a grown man would still be living with his mother, and his behavior was just as odd as hers.
Mark Gerber had told me long ago that Mrs. Price was a witch, and I believed him. It wasn't difficult to believe it either; Mrs. Price's actions gave rise to all sorts of rumors about her and her son. The Price house was our own version of the Bates Motel. It was dark and dirty, and it was obscured from view by trees and bushes and vines. An atmosphere of gloom hung over it, and when you passed by at night, only a pale 40 watt bulb dimly lit the front porch, and there was only the slightest hint of light on inside.
Mrs. Price was a retired English teacher. John-John was supposed to have been a very intelligent student when he was in school. As an adult he was seldom seen and never spoke to anyone. John Price was our Boo Radley, but we didn't dare go near the house to get a look inside.
Sometimes Mrs. Price would talk to my mother. She would comment on how nice and polite she thought Carl and I were, but at the same time condemn us for wanting to play in the woods. Mrs. Price was an environmentalist and very protective of her own woods, and she didn't like the idea of a bunch of wild kids climbing trees and building forts and just having a good time. I don't know what she thought we were doing in the woods, and anyways, the woods behind our house didn't even belong to her. The woods belonged to Mr. Rizzuto just down the street, and he didn't mind us being there, so what's the big deal anyhow?
Mrs. Price was odd and she acted odd and there were times when she literally appeared out of nowhere, as if she rose up out of the ground, and she'd scare the living daylight out of us all. She was always dressed in real thin dresses and dirty old sweaters. Her hands were always covered by the work gloves she wore, and her glasses always seemed smudged up. Her hair was always in need of combing, and the stockings on her legs were torn and grimy. She was a sight!
So you can see it wasn't hard to believe that Mrs. Price was a witch.
My neighbor Paul Avis invented even more outrageous stories, mostly about John-John. Paul was convinced that John-John roamed the streets at night looking for stray dogs and cats. He had seen John-John walking around one evening with a small sickle in his hand, and so his imagination just went wild. John-John was killing all the stray animals and cutting off their heads, to be used in strange ceremonies performed by him and his mother, somewhere in the woods behind their house. Mark Gerber confirmed all of this, and told us that the woods behind Mrs. Price's house was lined with the heads of all of the cats and dogs that John-John had caught. He told us that he had gone back there and seen it all with his own eyes.
One day our curiosity got the better of us, and we decided once and for all to see for ourselves whether or not Mrs. Price's back yard was full of animal heads.

Heading For Summer In '63

2009-01-19T09:36:00.003-05:00

My Fifth Grade year will be my best so far at Woodbury Heights Elementary. Straight A's! No ifs ands or buts, I'm one of the smart kids now, and I've got the report card to prove it. My brother Carl is another story, but he doesn't care, he just wants to get by, and that's all he does.
One of the best things we did in Fifth Grade was to go to Philadelphia on one of our class trips. We didn't go to a museum or the zoo or even to the Liberty Bell. We went to a movie. They took us to see "How The West Was Won", in one of the big movie theatres in the city. I think it was the Boyd Theatre. It was one of those new Cinerama movies, with the picture split into three sections, and a really wide screen, so you felt like you were actually in the movie. There was a buffalo stampede, and the buffaloes ran towards you and then jumped over your head. We got to go see the movie because we had been studying early American History, so I guess it was OK to go see a movie about it. My favorite part of course, would be the Civil War part, but I was disappointed because it was only a few minutes' worth out of the whole picture. It wasn't a great movie, but it was exciting to go see it in the city, and the big screen and all the noise from the super sound system was unlike anything we'd experienced at the Wood Theatre back in New Jersey.
I will miss Fifth Grade. I think Mrs. Nolte was the nicest teacher I ever had, including Mrs. Lee. She made us all work hard, but she was a very calm lady and our classroom was a very comfortable place to be.
This will be our last year in that old familiar building. Our Sixth Grade will head over to the St. Margaret's Catholic School while they put a new addition onto Woodbury Heights Elementary. St. Margaret's is on the other side of town where one of the Southwoods housing developements is, so I've got a mile walk now. I'll be riding my black Rixe bike a lot when the weather is nice, and now that Mom has learned to drive, I won't have to wonder which neighbor will get me to school in bad weather anymore.
I'll leave Fifth Grade with a new best friend in Steve Kay, and I'll still have a crush on Susan Burns. It will be three months before I can capture her again in our games of Team Tag in the playground.
Summer will be strange for me this year. I won't have Whee-Zee to run with, no more faithful companion at my side.
My new bedroom will be built up in the attic, and Carl and I will decide to continue sharing a room.
We hear that the new high school will be called Gateway Regional High School, and it will be built in the fields behind our house, the fields that are part of Mr. Rizzuto's farm. Mr. Rizzuto lives on the Deptford side of Egg Harbor Road just a little ways down the street from us. The woods I've played in all my young life belong to him, and now that will be owned by the new school. My last chance to spend time there. My world of imagination will be behind a chain-link fence, another wall going up, so I'll have to use the woods around the lake and up on Freund's cliff from now on.
I can't wait for summer. Non-stop days of playing army and swimming in the lake. Mom can drive now, so that opens up a world of possibilities. Dad says he might take us to Gettysburg to see the battlefield, so I've got that to look forward to.
My little sister will be a year old in August, so that means two birthday party cook-outs this summer.
I'll have more jobs to do too. I won't be feeding the dog anymore, but I will have to start mowing the lawn on a regular basis. I've gotta take out the garbage and burn the trash, and help do the dishes, and anything else I'm told to do. I've heard stories about kids getting an allowance. An allowance? Not yet. Mom and Dad reward good behavior, but there's nothing formal. My father had to haul water from a stream every day when he lived in a two room shack in the woods in Maryland. You think I'm gonna ask for an allowance? Yeah, right.
I just hope they don't ask me to watch my little sister too much. She's almost past the diaper stage, and once was enough for me.

June 11, 1963

2009-01-17T11:31:00.004-05:00

It was June and Fifth Grade was coming to a close. Time to think of summer. Time not to think of serious things for a while. Mrs. Nolte had other ideas. She wanted us to think real hard about what we wanted to do when we grew up. She had us write it down. What did any eleven year old really know about what they wanted to do when they got older? There were so many choices, so how could you pick something?
I picked what I knew, or what I thought I knew. My head was filled with patriotism and soldiers and playing army, so I picked what I knew. I would go to West Point and when I was finished there I would either stay in the army and protect my country, or become a historian and explore all of battlefields and the ruins of historical places in other lands. I was sure of my convictions.

On June 11, 1963, other people’s convictions were being tested. We watched them on the evening news.
In that far-off little country called Vietnam, a place none of us understood, a war was going on between the Communists in the north, and the government we protected in the south. What we didn’t know was that there was another war within that war, a lot like what was going on in our country. It was a war of religious prejudice. The rulers of South Vietnam were mostly Catholics, and they were treating the Buddhists the same way black Americans were being treated here. It was too complicated for an eleven year old goofball like me to truly understand. I didn’t really understand the prejudice in our own country, or how it affected people’s lives, even though I was watching all of the turmoil as it happened on the TV in my living room.
One thing that day caught my attention like no other. That night on the news was the sight of a man sitting in the street in Vietnam. The man was a Buddhist monk, and he was protesting against the treatment of Buddhists by his government. Just like the black people I’d seen in Alabama, except this man’s protest was dramatically different.
This monk had himself doused with gasoline and then he lit a match an deliberately set himself on fire.
He burned himself to death for all the world to see, and the world watched in horror, we all saw it on TV.
The monk died silently, burning to death without screaming or moving.
He had the strength of his convictions.

That same day in Alabama, two black Americans wanted to go to college. James Hood and Vivian Monroe were going to enroll in the University of Alabama. The governor of Alabama, George Wallace, was totally against racial integration. He had made a speech denouncing integration at the beginning of the year, and now he stood in the doorway of the school, trying to prevent two of his fellow citizens from entering. He would not have moved at all if it weren’t for the U.S. Marshals and the Deputy United States Attorney General and the Alabama National Guard to convince him.
George Wallace moved aside, and the University of Alabama would have its first black students. James Hood and Vivian Monroe had the strength of their convictions.
George Wallace backed away from his.
That night President Kennedy gave a speech. It was a speech about equal rights for all Americans. He told us that racial prejudice no longer had a place in the United States. He reminded us all that America was founded on the principle that all people were equal, and that everyone should be treated fairly. President Kennedy would ask the Congress to pass Civil Rights laws that would guarantee everyone in America equal treatment. President Kennedy’s views were not popular with a lot of white Americans, but he had been elected as the choice of hope and a brighter future, and now he was standing by his belief in a better America for everybody.
It was an important day, that June 11 in 1963.
What did I make of it?
I was certainly shocked at watching a man burn himself to death, but I didn’t understand it at all. I could never understand why white people down south were so against black people sitting in school with them, and why they were willing to go to such great lengths to prevent it. Most likely I watched President Kennedy’s speech, and even though I heard it I probably didn’t listen. A lot of Americans weren’t listening, especially white ones.
I was probably mad that one of my favorite TV shows, Combat, wasn’t on because the President was giving another boring speech, and jeez, when is it going to be over, anyway? What do you want from an eleven year old? I can barely change my sister’s diaper, you know?

In Memoriam

2009-01-09T23:22:00.001-05:00

Former neighbor and childhood friend, and sometime nemesis.

Mark Gerber

Spring: 1963

2008-12-31T09:32:00.006-05:00

The warmth of spring and the Fifth Grade is almost at an end. I like Mrs. Nolte, and I like the Fifth Grade. After Whee-Zee died I immerse myself in schoolwork.

I'm a knowledge junkie, and I like to read encyclopedias just for fun. Whenever we have to do reports, and we do a lot in Mrs. Nolte's class, I use the time to read about all kinds of stuff in the World Book Encyclopedia. I love the World Book. There's science and history, and biographies of famous people. There are pictures of all of the flags of the world, and geography and inventions and, well, just everything. We don't have the World Book at home, but we do have the Encyclopedia for Children that Mom gets for us at the Acme Supermarket. They're not as detailed as the World Book, and you can only buy them one at a time, but they're better than nothing. My mind absorbs all it can, and I remember almost everything, so I seem a lot smarter than I really am.
I'm still infatuated with Sue Burns. Girls are starting to seem a bit more important to me now. I can't explain it, but it matters to me. I'd especially like it if Sue Burns liked me back, but I'm too stupid and goofy to even tell her how I feel.
We play a game of tag in the playground, boys against the girls. Team tag, I think we called it. You try to capture all of the girls. Usually you tried to catch the girl you liked the best, and so I was always trying to catch Sue Burns. Your teammates would try to tag you when you were captured, so you could be free again. We played this game all spring, a kind of early mating ritual played out in the sand.
We'll be getting ready for the May Fair again, and we'll play softball at recess.
Don Vanneman and Joyce Hoefers are still the leaders in our class, and I'm still one of the last kids chosen when we pick for teams at kickball and such.
I'm working harder at my homework, and I'll get straight A's.
We hear that next year we'll be at the Saint Margaret's Catholic school building while they make a new wing for our school. We also hear that a new high school will be built in Woodbury Heights, so none of us will go to Woodbury High like the kids before us.
A new high school here in town. I wonder where they're going to build it?
I'm riding my new black West German Rixe bicycle, and when it's warm I ride home for lunch, so I don't always have to sit in that horrible little room in the basement so much.
There's lots of stuff going on in the world right now, stuff we don't talk about in our little school in our little town.
Right now we're getting ready for a May Fair, small town white kids without a care in the world.
Right now black kids our own age are getting ready to stare down police and endure the blasts from fire hoses and policemen's clubs and dogs as they march for freedom in Alabama.
Young East German kids are trying to figure out how to get across a wall of bricks and barbed wire, and kids in Vietnam are being forced out of their villages by Green Berets and the Vietcong.
Yeah, it's great to be an American alright.

Happy Holidays from Maddox Corner

2008-12-21T21:21:00.004-05:00

Stay tuned - there's still a lot left to tell about 1963. Whee-Zee is gone, and Fifth Grade is coming to a close. Summer is just around the corner, and after that the Sixth Grade, and of course we're approaching that awful day in November.

So, enjoy the holiday - but remember - we'll be back - we're just around the corner.

A New Civil War

2008-12-19T20:15:00.014-05:00

On the evening news I see more black and white images.

A city in Alabama is what I see.

Birmingham, Alabama.
Black people in the streets protesting.

Civil disobedience is the phrase I hear. A man named Martin Luther King, Jr. calling for an end to injustice.

I see kids my own age, black kids, marching in protest.

I see police dogs attacking black people in the streets of Birmingham Alabama, and firemen blasting them with hoses.

I’ve been seeing these kinds of things on the news and in Life magazine for quite a while now, and I can’t understand it at all. Americans hating and beating other Americans just because they aren’t white.

I see fear and hatred on the evening news. Fear and hatred and violence in Birmingham, Alabama.

Can this be happening here in America? Land of the free, home of the brave?

Each day in school I’m taught to believe in America, to believe in the red, white and blue.
But there are these black and white pictures on the evening news.
The violence continues in Birmingham, Alabama.
These black and white pictures on the evening news.
Each day in school I’m taught to believe in America, to believe in the red, white and blue.
But there are these black and white pictures on the evening news.

Trial By Fire

2008-12-17T15:56:00.002-05:00

It's a warm spring day and I'm sweating. Something I've been dreading has finally happened. I've been left in charge of my baby sister, and I think her diaper has to be changed!
Cheryl Ann is crying, and she has no interest in her bottle. That can only mean one thing - she's gone to the bathroom and I'm the only one here who can do anything about it.
I hope it's just pee. Pee you can deal with. Pee is just water. It smells bad, but not as bad as you-know-what, and I'd rather not deal with that.
I check Cheryl's diaper and my worst fears are realized. She's pooped herself. I can smell it, and it smells REALLY BAD!
Well, I can't let my sister sit around in a dirty diaper. I know I wouldn't want to be sitting in my own poop all afternoon, so I resolve to change her.
I've got a vague idea about what to do. Diapers go around the baby's butt and up and over the "private parts", and you pin the whole thing together. It's a triangle, right, and you just pin the ends of the triangle together. Piece of cake, really.
What I'm not prepared for is the odor when the diaper comes off. Whew! How can a little kid make such a stink? I get that diaper off and into the pail as quick as I can. Wiping poop off of a little baby that won't lie still makes me even more nervous. And what color is that poop, anyway? There isn't anything like that at Aunt Bette's farm, and they've got poop all over the place.
I get that off of her butt the best I can.
You know, I can see her "private parts". I try not to look, 'cause after all she's my sister, and I don't know if it's right to be doing that, but I do see the difference between boys and girls, but I don't stare or anything, 'cause I don't think it's right, but I guess they expected me to change my little sister if she messed herself, so where's that diaper anyway?
I sprinkle baby powder on her like confectioner's sugar, and I wonder if it's too much or too little, hey how would I know, you know?
The diaper is a little more complicated than it looks, and I feel like I'm gonna have to hog-tie my sister like a calf in a rodeo if she doesn't stop kicking her feet.
The diaper is around her somehow and I've got to pin it all together. I'm sweating even more,and my sister is squirming, and I don't want to jab her with the safety pin.
Somehow it all comes together, and I'm slipping those rubber pants on her and the deed is done.
It may not be neat and it may not be pretty, but my sister is dry and clean.
I hope my parents don't do this to me again.

Reality Check

2008-12-13T10:19:00.002-05:00

I’m walking home from school on a warm day in April. I’m coming to where Walnut meets Lake Avenue. It’s where I always take the dirt path shortcut instead of walking all the way to the corner. Walnut Avenue begins to curve around the lake here, just past Trackie’s store, and then it bends a little more as you pass Nancy Fleisch’s house. I can see straight up the sidewalk and through Mrs. Price’s Sleepy Hollow to where the end of our driveway is.
Wait a minute, I think I see a familiar form standing at the end of the driveway. Could it be? That brown, scary-looking, droopy-eared dog of mine?
Did they realize it was all a mistake, and that Whee-Zee could get better, so they brought her back home?
My heart soars, and I begin to run up Walnut Avenue as fast as my legs can take me.
I look up again, but there’s nothing standing in the driveway.
It was just a shadow playing tricks, just wishful thinking getting the better of me.
Whee-Zee is gone, I know that now.

Goodbye girl.
I will never forget you.

A Most Terrible Day

2008-12-12T08:34:00.001-05:00

I’m standing in the hallway of our little house watching my dog Whee-Zee go out the back door. She’s moving slowly, down those familiar back steps. Past the spot beneath the spigot on the wall where I feed her every night. Did she pause to look down there?

I’m standing in the hallway of our little house looking through the picture window of the living room. Whee-Zee is walking slowly up the driveway, her head hung down. She doesn’t look back.

I’m standing in the hallway of our little house looking at a gray truck sitting at the end of the driveway, its back doors open, and two men are waiting. The truck has letters on it, but I can’t read what they say.
This can’t be happening. My dog, my best friend in all the world is being taken away from me, from all of us, and I wish it weren’t true.

“Whee-Zee is dying”, they say.
“She will suffer more and more, and there’s nothing anyone can do.”
“She’ll be put to sleep, and she won’t feel any pain.”
“Don’t worry, she’ll be in Heaven.”

I don’t care. Whee-Zee is my dog, my best friend, my protector. Who has the right to take her away?
She’s still breathing, she still looks at me with those big brown eyes, and she’s happy when I come home from school.
Who says she won’t feel any pain?

I want to run out the door and down those familiar back steps past the spot where I feed her and up the drive and put my arms around her and protect her from all of this, but I’m frozen where I stand. I’m terrified and angry, and my heart is in my throat. WHEE-ZEE! NO, THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING!

But it is. It is happening, and I’m watching it happen.

I’m standing in the hallway of our little house and I want to scream. I do scream. I scream deep within myself, from the pit of my soul I scream inside my head. I scream so hard and so loud inside that I almost shatter.

WHEE-ZEE!!!! NO!NO!NO!,NO!,NO!NO!,No,No,No,no,no,no,no,no,n......................

I’m standing in the hallway of our little house, looking through the picture window in the living room. I see my dog Whee-Zee get inside that sad-looking gray truck, and she never looks back. The doors of the truck are closed behind her. What is she thinking about all of this? Does she know?

NO!!!!!!!!

I want to run outside and pound on the doors of that truck and demand that they give me back my dog, that it’s all a mistake, a terrible, horrible mistake, but I’m frozen in terror.

NO!!!!!!!!!!!............

I’m standing in the hallway of our little house, staring out of the picture window in the living room, looking at the end of the driveway where a sad-looking gray truck once stood.

Bad Signs

2008-12-11T16:28:00.001-05:00

I know it’s selfish of me, but I consider Whee-Zee my dog. Sure, everybody in the family loves her and she loves them, but still, I consider her MY dog. She’s been with me for as long as I can remember things, going back to when I was two years old.
Wheez is about 12 or 13 now, and that makes her older than even my grandparents in people years. My years have been shared by an ugly brown boxer who would sacrifice her own life to protect me and my family.
I’m worried about Whee-Zee. She’s gotten sick again. Every time I feed her in the evening she throws up and her body shakes, and she walks away from her food looking sadder and sadder. There’s nothing I can do except lay on the floor and pet her and hope I’m making her feel better.
She’s getting weaker, and so Dad takes her to the doctor. She got better the last time, so I’m hoping for the best.
Mom and Dad look serious when Whee-Zee comes home. They speak quietly, and there’s sadness in their voices.
I don’t know what a stroke is. Isn’t that something that happens to people?
I think I hear them say things like “She’ll only keep on suffering”, and “It will be hard on all of us”, but I don’t hear everything clearly.
My dog is sick, but doctors can make things better, can’t they? I mean, every time I get sick the doctor cures me, can’t they cure my dog? Sure they can, I know it.
Whee-Zee is sick, but she’s still walking and breathing and she looks at me with that look of affection she’s always had.
People get better, and Whee-Zee, well she’s just like a person, you know?
Mom and Dad tell us that “something will have to be done”, that Whee-Zee will just continue to get weaker and suffer even more.
What will HAVE to be done? What are they talking about?
It can’t be what I think it is, can it?
“Put her out of her misery”?
What are Mom and Dad thinking?
I know it sounds selfish, but I’ve always considered Whee-Zee MY dog.
Just what are Mom and Dad thinking?
MY dog – my best friend, and now she’s sick and I know she’ll get better.
Won’t you girl?
Won’t you?

Movin' On Up

2008-12-08T18:07:00.003-05:00

The yard we have on our corner in Woodbury Heights is pretty big, and we can extend that by going into the woods. If you include the Avis’ yard next door, it’s even bigger. I’m on the Gerber’s property a lot too, so my world is quite large.
Our house, on the other hand, is pretty small. It’s gotten a lot smaller now that there are six of us. When it was just Mom and Dad and me and Whee-Zee, well, there was plenty of room. Carl came along and we all had to make extra room, and now we’ve got to find some place to put my little baby sister.
Everything is on the first floor. You enter our house by the back door. It’s really the side door, but we call it the back one. Everybody but strangers come in the back door and through the kitchen. The kitchen isn’t very big, and when there’s more than four people in there it gets pretty cramped. When Dad has card games on Saturday nights, it sounds like there’s a hundred people in the kitchen.
The living room isn’t too big either, but we cram friends and neighbors and relatives in there on Christmas Eve and other festive times, and somehow they all seem to fit.
There’s only one bathroom. There’s a lot of waiting your turn, a lot of “holding it”, if you know what I mean.
Me and Carl have our bedroom right next to the bathroom. We each have a bed, a bureau apiece, and we both have an army footlocker to keep toys in. There’s also a little desk that has those cubby holes in it to hold lots of little things. Of course, we have a closet. You know, THE CLOSET, the one that has a life of its own. I know I’m older now and I should know better, but I swear there’s something in there at night. Stay over some time and listen. At least I don’t sleep with the hall light on anymore. That week at Aunt Bette’s farm cured me of that.
Mom and Dad’s room is across the hall, and that’s that.
We do have a basement. The cellar as we like to call it. The cellar is cool in the summer and pretty warm in the winter. It’s a place for us to run around in when it rains, a place to have birthday parties and New Year’s Eve parties, and other family get-togethers. We set up our model trains down there, and I build my models on the old bar that Dad brought home. It’s red and curved, and us kids play Western Saloon around it.
There is an attic, but it isn’t finished. It’s a wide open space that seems enormous to me when I’m up there. The floor just has plywood placed around where Mom and Dad store things. My old hobby horse is up there, and Carl’s old baby coach, and there’s a cedar chest. The attic is where Mom and Dad hide our Christmas presents, and where they put other junk that we don’t have any room for.
So where are we going to put Cheryl Ann? She’s a girl, and little girls can’t share bedrooms with their brothers. We can’t have the bunk beds up all year. It would be too hot for me to sleep so close to the ceiling in the summer.
Mom and Dad tell us that when the weather gets warm that they will have the attic converted into bedrooms and storage space for us. Me and Carl will move upstairs and Cheryl will get our old room.
Upstairs! We’re gonna move upstairs. It’s exciting and scary all at the same time. We have a choice of separate rooms, or we can share a room like we do now, and we’ll have an extra bedroom.
I have to think about this. Moving upstairs, away from the comforting sight of Whee-Zee sleeping in the hall. She’s too old to climb the stairs.
The ceiling’s gonna be too low for our bunk beds, so the thrill of my winter hideout will be gone forever.
I’ll be far away from that pesky closet and all of its dark secrets.
There’s gonna be a new closet to contend with. Maybe this one won’t be a dark hole to the spirit world, and I’ll be able to sleep with both eyes closed.
I think I’m gonna like this new room upstairs.
I just hope they build us a bathroom, those stairs are pretty steep.
I don’t want to be “holdin’ it” all night, you know?

Separate But Equal

2008-12-06T08:10:00.002-05:00

1963. So here I am, eleven years old. I go to school where I pledge allegiance and sing songs that praise my country and extol its virtues. But what am I becoming? I believe in the land of the free and the home of the brave, with liberty and justice for all. I believe that any one can grow up to be president, and that America is the greatest country in the world. I’m a red-white-and-blue, Yankee doodle dandy, dyed-in-the-wool, true-blue American. Yes sir, that’s me. But.....
I’m being molded. Despite all my beliefs in America and to the flag and all that, I’ve learned how to hate. It’s imperceptible, but it’s there, and if it’s not downright hate, it’s fear. Fear of anyone different from me. Especially black people. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not like what’s going on down south. There are no “colored only” signs, and black and white kids go to school together in Woodbury and Deptford, and they can sit at the counter in Woolworth’s. I ride the bus to Woodbury and sit next to black kids my own age, and no one beats me for it.
Things are changing. This summer you would find black kids fishing at our lake, standing right beside me and my friend Keith. They would tag along with us as we went rake fishing along the banks and share in our harvest of turtles and such. The Jericho Baptist Church would still have its baptisms in the waters of our lake as well, but there are no black people swimming or lying on our beach.
I’m taught to believe that everyone is equal, and yet I can ignore our “colored” neighbors across the street, the house where my very first friend and playmate Lulu once lived, she herself a little “colored” girl.
It bothers me sometimes. I don’t truly understand the why. It’s not like I’m some eleven year old philosopher or something. My classmates and I don’t discuss racial matters on the playground at school, heck, we barely talk to the girls in our class. It’s just that that song from Sunday school still resonates in my brain: “Jesus loves the little children....be they yellow, black or white...” I can’t make sense of it.
I’m being molded. I and everyone else here in Woodbury Heights. Taught by parents and grandparents and friends and relatives who still carry the old fears and ideas of the past. Our mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, older cousins and our neighbors clutter up their minds in fear and mistrust, and no one can say why. They carry their thoughts and fears on their sleeves, but it is getting diluted. It’s in my back pocket. I don’t always feel it, but it’s there.
I don’t like this hating thing.
I know it’s not right, but it’s there.
I didn’t learn it in school, it’s what the “real world” taught me, and I see it on TV.
I don’t like this hating thing.

Will it always be with me?

Peace On Earth

2008-12-04T21:23:00.002-05:00

How long it seemed, the waiting for Christmas to come after the Thanksgiving holiday was over. I pored over the Sears catalog, wishing for every toy soldier set in there. My belief in Santa long gone, and I was turning eleven on the 20th of December. I wouldn’t expect much this year. I’ve got a baby sister in the house now, so there will be less money to spread around.
Snow falls early this December, even though it’s warm at the beginning of the month. I won’t get straight A’s at the end of the marking period. I slip to a B in English and Arithmetic, so I guess I’m paying more attention to TV and the coming holiday.
Who among us can concentrate with the promise of snow and presents on the way?
I really hope I’ll get the Marx Civil War play set this year. Paul LaPann has it, and it’s amazing. Confederates and Yankees, cannons and a stone bridge, and figures of Robert E. Lee and U.S. Grant, and a tin lithographed southern mansion. That’s for me!
Milton Bradley has another American Heritage game out. Broadside, a naval battle board game, so I’ll ask for that. Carl wants the Beany and Cecil game that has a puppet of Cecil. It’s one of those ones that talk when you pull a string on the side of it. Cecil gives you spoken clues as you navigate around the board.
The toy ads are coming fast and furious, and everything looks great on TV. How to decide? What to choose?
My birthday comes, and snow comes with it, and it’s looking more and more like we’ll be having a white Christmas this year. I get my one big birthday gift from Mom and Dad, and yep, you guessed it, I get another West German Rixe bicycle. This one is black, with gull-wing handlebars and one of those mouse-trap clamp things on the back. It looks fast. It’s a 26 inch, and I can’t wait for spring and warm weather, though I know I’ll go through the same frustrations trying to ride it.
We’ve got a lot of Christmas cards this year, strung along the wall of the living room, rows and rows of them, a proud reminder of all the friends and family we have.
Mom will paint a jolly Santa on the picture window in the living room, and Dad will string a few lights on the bushes and across the front of the house.
We get snow for Christmas, and all is well with me and my family in our little house on the corner in Woodbury Heights.
A white Christmas, presents, a new bike and time off from school, and best of all my dog Whee-Zee is still with us.
Still time for that Christmas nap on the living room rug girl.
Still time for us to snore.

Autumn Calm

2008-11-28T13:42:00.001-05:00

I and the rest of the world held our breath for two weeks that October in 1962. It was high noon and we stood face to face with the Russians, ready to fire nuclear missiles and drop H-bombs onto the world. We got lucky and cooler heads prevailed, and the earth kept on spinning.
I think the Russians knew we meant business. Didn’t we drop two A-bombs on Japan? That must have been on the minds of Kruschev and all the other leaders in the Kremlin. We actually did it once, and we’d probably do it again, so the Russians backed down.
It was time to heave a sigh of relief and get down to picking out a Halloween costume. Maybe I should dress up as Castro or Kruschev. Imagine my neighbors reactions to a communist boogeyman knocking on their doors! I could wave my arms or bang my shoe at them and they’d tremble with fear. How about a nuclear missile costume? It’s going to be hard trying to be scary this year.
I decide not to be a ghost or a ghoul or anything spooky. Mom has this great big trunk full of old clothes so I dig through that and I finally make up my mind. An old suit with a vest, a curly black wig and a derby and a cane, and suddenly I’m Charlie Chaplin. We’ve got some of those masks that just cover your nose and cheeks, with just an upper lip. They really change your face without covering it up, and the one I pick has a mustache, too. I’m out to make people laugh this year, we’ve all been frightened enough.
It rains on Halloween, but not enough to spoil the fun, and Carl and I haul in plenty of candy between us. I fool a lot of the neighbors, and they can’t guess it’s me. My Charlie Chaplin is a success.
November arrives cold and blustery, and the Russians are taking down their missile sites in Cuba. Steve Kay and I continue to play war around his house and through the grounds of the Episcopal church. A lot of our classmates don’t join in as much as they used to – they’re getting more interested in football, so our armies aren’t as large as they used to be, and our soldiers are a lot younger than they’ve been, but we fight on. We don’t act out that new war, the one over in Vietnam. We don’t quite understand it or what’s going on. Our soldiers are called “advisors” over there, like they don’t really exist or something, yet they go out into jungles and up into mountains fighting some guys they call Charlie. There’s a lot of Special Forces over there. They’re called Green Berets or something, and they’re supposed to be some kind of super soldiers, but we don’t hear much about them, so we fight the Civil War or World War II, battles we can understand.
November is leaf-raking time and I hate that job. We have big oak trees in our yard, and it seems like the leaves never stop falling. I’m spending too many Sundays raking those leathery old things. The only part of the job that’s fun is burning them in the curb. The oak leaves give off a dense black smoke. Maple and cherry leaves dry out fast, so they burn white smoke that doesn’t choke you. The oak leaves are never ending, and I rake and burn, rake and burn up to Thanksgiving. I’ll be thankful not to have to rake any more of these darn things.
Whee-Zee is doing OK. She’s very tired and old-looking, but she’s alive and that makes me happy. I can’t imagine losing her.
My little sister is the luckiest one of us all. She just gurgles and smiles and stuff. She doesn’t have to worry about bombs or missiles. Doesn’t matter to her that the world almost ended, and leaves have to be raked, or worry that our dog could have died.
Yeah, little Cheryl is lucky.
Christmas is coming and she’s just going along for the ride.

Dodging The Bullet

2008-11-25T12:36:00.003-05:00

Tick, tick, tick, or so it seemed to me. Ever since October 22 I found it hard to sleep and not to think about the end of the world coming.

Tick, tick, tick, and the evening news showed more pictures of missile bases in Cuba.

On Friday, October 26, our destroyers stopped a Russian registered cargo ship, the Marcula and searched it, but no weapons were found, and the Russians threatened us with war.

Tick, tick, tick, and on Saturday the 27th, I saw on the news that one of our spy planes, one of those U-2 things, was shot down over Cuba. Our pilot, Rudolf Anderson, was killed. The Cubans are also shooting at our low-flying planes as well. The newspapers say that the army and marines in Florida are ready to invade Cuba at any minute. President Kennedy gives the Russians one last chance to get the missiles out of Cuba, or suffer the consequences. I don’t sleep a wink. I can’t even enjoy watching Gunsmoke. “If I should die before I wake”...no, I won’t say that, not tonight, not any more.

Sunday, October 28th, and the Russians agree to take their missiles out of Cuba if we promise not to invade it. Agreements are made, and the newscasters seem to relax; Walter Cronkite doesn’t sound so ominous anymore.

Maybe I can get some sleep now. I can decide what to wear for Halloween. What is it about Halloween time and the Communists, anyways? Why do they always seem to start something every year at the end of October? How are we going to scare anyone now?
The good news is that it looks like the world isn’t going to end tomorrow.
What’s even better, it looks like Whee-Zee is recovering!!
Still time girl.
Still time.

Time Bomb

2008-11-22T08:32:00.018-05:00

"Now I lay me down to sleep...." Many of us recited that prayer at bedtime. I had stopped doing that - I didn't like the way it sounded at the end.

All summer long ships were sailing into the Caribbean, into its warm blue/green waters making their way into the harbors of Cuba. Lots of Russian ships. Our navy was watching. My cousin Danny watched them from the deck of his destroyer.
He saw Russian merchant vessels with their decks loaded down with big crates covered up in canvas. The newspapers said that a large amount of Russian soldiers were now in Cuba, and Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and all the other news men on TV were wondering what was going on down there.

What did I know about it? Cuba this and Cuba that. For years now it seemed that everything bad in the world somehow got all tangled up with that island so close to our shore.

The images I saw, the black and white and gray pictures of Castro. Always pointing his finger in the air and blaming America for all the problems in the world.
There he was hugging Nikita Kruschev and telling the world he was now a Communist, and the Russians were his only friends in the world. America was out to get him and he wasn't going to allow another Bay of Pigs happen again, so he was letting the Russians come and train his army.

Black and white and gray images of Russian ships at sea.

One Monday night in October, the 22nd it was, as I was getting ready to watch TV, President Kennedy came on to talk to the country. One of our U-2 spy planes had taken pictures of missile bases on Cuba, he said. He showed us pictures of them.

Black and white and gray images of trucks and tents and airplanes. White letters pointing out the missiles and the barracks of soldiers.

These were Russian missiles and Russian soldiers, and the missiles were capable of striking deep into our country. President Kennedy then told us that the missiles were nuclear ones. Nuclear missiles aimed right at us just ninety miles away. The President declared that he would regard any missile fired at us from Cuba as an act of war coming from the Russians, and that we would strike back at them. He was ordering a quarantine around Cuba, and our navy was going to stop and search all ships to make sure they weren't bringing in more weapons. He scared the bejeezus out of me and probably everybody else in the world.

It was hard to sleep that night.

Black and white and gray images of atomic bombs going off. The force of a nuclear blast destroying everything in its path would play over and over again in my mind.

On the way to school we sang the Kruschev song, something to help us laugh it all off, but in the back of our minds we feared the worst, and we had more air-raid drills to remind us all of the danger.

Black and white and gray images of American navy ships following a Russian submarine.
More photos of Russian missile sites, and the U.N. building, and stories about U-2 spy planes. Thousands of soldiers being sent to Florida, and would the Russians allow us to search their ships peacefully?

Tick, tick, tick, it seemed to me.

And then the day came.

Black and white and gray images of Russian ships, with their decks jammed with great big crates, and we were going to stop them.

Tick, tick, tick, it seemed to me.

"..if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."

Something's Not Right With Whee-Zee

2008-11-15T12:06:00.001-05:00

This short-haired scary-looking dog has been by my side since I was a small boy with no understanding of the world around me. This droopy-eared, one tooth protruding stubby-tailed creature who would do anything to protect me. My most trusted friend and companion who taught me more about love and loyalty than any person in my life so far.
My dog is sick, and my parents tell me it’s serious. They tell me boxers can have heart attacks just like people, so we’ll have to hope and pray that Whee-Zee will get better.
Wheez is older and grayer. Her energy isn’t always there, but she is always glad to be with me and my family. She was about two or three years old when Dad brought her home, so now in people years she’s older than my grandparents.
We don’t run together much anymore, but that’s OK, it’s comforting just to have her around. Every now and then she’s her old self, and we go for long walks, and she might even chase a stick or two.
There are these black pouch-like things growing on her legs, and my parents take Whee-Zee to the doctor to have them removed. Sometimes she can’t keep her food down when I feed her, and I feel so helpless watching her as she throws up after eating. I put my arms around her and I try not to cry.
I don’t know if it’s prayer or good luck or what, but Whee-Zee starts to feel better. She looks a lot older now, and she’s not as strong, but she’s alive. My parents warn me that she might not stay that way, but I don’t want to think about that. No, Whee-Zee is going to be OK, she’s just got to be.
Please girl. Please get better.
You’ve just got to..

Higher Education

2008-11-14T14:36:00.004-05:00

It was a warm and sunny morning that first day of October, the kind of day when you didn’t mind walking to school. Here in South Jersey we were enjoying “Indian Summer”; mild sunny days that made it difficult to concentrate in class. I walked those tree-lined streets without a care in the world, on to school, and climbed those stairs with all my classmates. We sat as roll was taken, the sun’s rays bright and warm, streaming through those great big windows. Then we stood as always to pledge allegiance to the red white and blue in the corner of the room.

As we stood to recite our pledge, a young man in Mississippi was walking to school. His walk was not as pleasant as mine. This young man had to be escorted to college by federal marshals, amid the jeers and threats from all of his fellow students. His name was James Meredith, and he was going to attend the University of Mississippi, but he wasn’t wanted there. Was James Meredith a criminal? Was he a communist spy or something? No, James Meredith was an American, a black American, and his fellow citizens were against black Americans entering their school.
President Kennedy had to order that federal marshals escort James Meredith to class. National Guard troops were called out, because the people down there were determined to prevent a black man from integrating their school. Thousands of white people began to riot, and to shoot at the marshals, and so two people were killed and scores were wounded, and hundreds were arrested. More soldiers had to be sent into Mississippi, and more people would be arrested before some sense of order was restored. James Meredith made it to his first class that day, that fine sunny day in October, risking his life just to go to school.

I stood that day, hand over my heart along with my classmates, the sun shining bright upon us all. So earnest we were, so believing, as we spoke the words we said every day to the red white and blue in the corner of the room: “.....with liberty and justice for all.”

Around The Dial

2008-11-11T20:50:00.005-05:00

School had begun and the days of summer were coming to an end. I and everyone else would sprint out the door when the final bell had rung, eager to get in a few hours’ play before dinner and homework. Soon the days would be getting shorter, and our evenings would be spent in front of the television.
I eagerly awaited the fall preview edition of TV Guide. Packed full of information about all the new shows, and what may be happening in all of our old favorites. I pored over the TV Guide, looking for the programs that I thought would be worth watching, making mental notes and fixing the schedules in my mind.
Lots of new shows coming in 1962. A lot of shows that were past their prime, and I couldn’t figure out why they were still on. Lucy was funny once, but now she was pretty pathetic, and she was out of touch with what was funny, and yet they’re giving her a new show. How good can she be without Ricky and Fred? Ozzie and Harriet was completely awful, and we still couldn’t figure out exactly what Ozzie did for a living. Wally was kind of creepy by now, a grown man trying to look like a teenager when he should be trying to get a life for goodness sake. Jerry Mathers had lost his charm, and now he was just plain awkward.
Most of the animated shows were canceled, but we’ll still have the Flintstones on Friday night, and two new cartoons are coming on. The Jetsons and their world of the future, and the pun-laden adventures of a little kid named Beany and his friend Cecil the sea-sick sea serpent.
My favorite show, Car 54, Where Are You? is coming back on Sunday nights, and I can’t wait to see Toody and Muldoon make a mess of things in the Bronx once more. They help to make going to bed early for school a little easier.
One new show coming on has caught my attention. Combat! on ABC is going to be about American GIs in World War II, and I can’t wait for that to come on. Dad had been in the war, and if he was home at night to watch it, maybe he can tell me how realistic it is. World War II on TV! Tuesday nights at 7:30; gotta have my homework done early. Oh yeah, ABC has another show called the Gallant Men about an army squad in Italy in World War II. Gotta catch that one.
There’s gonna be a show called Mr. Ed, about a talking horse who only speaks to his owner. Sounds a lot like those Francis the Talking Mule movies I saw on TV over the summer. Might be worth a look.
I think I’ll watch another show taking place during the second world war. This one’s a comedy about PT boats. McHale’s Navy sounds kinda like Sgt. Bilko, so that one oughtta be good.
I guess I’ll try watching this new show about hillbillies moving to Beverly Hills. They strike it rich by finding oil on their property and so they move to a mansion or something. That might be funny, we’ll have to see.
I’ll still be getting advice from all those familiar TV fathers. Andy Taylor, Lucas McCain, Ward Cleaver, Steve Douglas and Jim Anderson, not to mention the off-the wall dads on the Danny Thomas Show and Dobie’s father Herbert T. Gillis. If only our real fathers were as wise and as funny as these guys. If only they had as much time to spend with us.
I still can’t stay up to watch Candid Camera on Sunday night unless there’s a holiday or Christmas vacation, so I have to catch that in the summer.
There’s still Gunsmoke and Wagon Train, and some people really like Bonanza, but most of the time I only watch it if it’s about Hoss Cartwright, ‘cause then it’s pretty funny.
I hope Jonathan Winters will show up on the Jack Paar Show more often, and I still don’t understand how shows like Hazel and Dennis the Menace stay on the air. Jay North looks like he’s 14 and he’s supposed to be playing a little kid like my brother! Jeez, give me a break.
I’ll have to be content with reading the TV Guide preview edition over and over and memorizing the schedules until October when the new shows come on. Let’s hope this new season is a good one.
There’s Jack Benny and Red Skelton on Tuesdays, Have Gun, Will Travel just before Gunsmoke, Dick Van Dyke on Wednesday, maybe Mom will let me stay up to see The Untouchables now.....

Fifth Grade

2008-11-09T09:40:00.006-05:00

I will take the same old trail to school again this year, but I will ride my bike more often in the warmer weather, so I'm gonna be able to come home for lunch once in a while. What a relief!
The Four Seasons have a hit song on the radio that I can't get out of my mind, and it plays over and over again in my head as I travel to school. It's called "Sherry Baby", reminding me of my new little sister. The high-pitch nasal sound of Frankie Valli pierces my brain, but the song won't let me be.
I wonder what Fifth Grade will be like. Will Mrs. Nolte be as tough on us as Mrs. Schoener was? I hope we don't have to spend hours and hours analyzing sentences any more. How hard will arithmetic be this year?
There's a lot in the news about abolishing prayer in school this year. There are people arguing that prayer in school is unconstitutional, and that not everyone is a Christian, and our country has no official religion. Some of the people against prayer are called atheists, and I haven't realized it yet, but that's what I'm becoming. Us kids don't understand it all, but you know, some of my classmates could be Jewish, so they're being forced to pray a Christian prayer against their will, so maybe it's not right after all. I used to be a Presbyterian, and I know some of my friends are Catholic, because every Easter time they get their foreheads smeared with ashes for whatever reason. There are kids with unusual last names, too, so who knows what kind of god they pray to. Oh well, it's too complicated for me to sort out. Makes no difference to me, as long as somebody wants to be my friend, I don't care who they pray to.
Mrs. Nolte turns out to be a pretty nice lady, a lot like Mrs. Lee. Mrs. Nolte is kinda like one of your favorite aunts, so it's easy to learn. Our class is relaxed, and we laugh a lot in between all the learning. Fifth Grade is gonna be OK.
After one of the first parent/teacher's meetings Mom comes home to tell me that Mrs. Nolte lives on Cohawkin Road near Aunt Bette and Uncle Everett. From now on I look for her every time we visit the farm.
Whee-Zee doesn't follow me to school anymore. She's getting old and slower, and she stays near my sister. Every now and then she's her old self, and she has all her energy back. It's always comforting to see her in the distance, waiting for me at the end of the driveway, shaking with delight as I pet her on the head when I get home.

Fifth Grade,1962
Front row, left to right:
Christine Lawrence, Carol Nelson, Mary Lou Lewis, Paul LaPann, Janice Martin, Diana Gabel, Susan Burns. Second row, L-R: Me, Linda Hankin, Sheila McLaughlin, Jimmy Matsuk, Ann Trocolli, Bradley Lloyd. Third row, L-R: Mrs. Nolte, Judy Hampton, Joyce Hoefers, Tommy Moore, Billy Hills, Nancy Fleisch, Richie Hearn. Back Row, L-R: Don Vanneman, Debbie Pryzwara, Greg Jones, Lora Carter, Patsy Mullin, Steve Kay.

I don't know what it is, but I'm getting straight A's right off the bat here in Fifth Grade. My brain is working overtime, but I'm not struggling this year, and for the first time I actually feel like I'm one of the smarter kids in school.
The new boy in class is Steve Kay, and he's from Canada. Actually, his parents are Canadian; he was born in the United States, so he's a citizen of both countries. His father is the Episcopal priest in town, and just like John Marvin, he and I become good friends. He's interested in history and war just like Paul and me, and we use his yard and the grounds of the Episcopal Church as our battlefields. There are many Sundays when the sounds of children at war are heard immediately after services. Father Kay is a very patient man.
I begin to notice the new girl in our class. Sue Burns is her name, and I find myself thinking about her more and more. Joyce and Sheila are still very pretty, and all the boys have crushes on them, but this Susan Burns is beginning to get to me.
The first part of September is here and the weather is warm and we'll swelter in our classroom. I've got a new friend and my brain is clicking and life is good.

And somewhere out in the warm waters of the Caribbean, from the deck of his ship my cousin Danny watches Russian cargo ships carrying their goods to Cuba.......

Summer Plays Out

2008-11-05T21:18:00.005-05:00

There’s still a few weeks left to enjoy the summer. Some time to go swimming at the lake, and to ride my bike around town.
This summer’s big movie was “Hatari!” starring John Wayne and Red Buttons as men who capture big game animals in Africa for zoos around the world. Exciting stuff watching them chase rhinos in jeeps and small trucks, using ropes and pure adrenalin. The “elephant walk” music from that movie would be on the radio and TV all summer, one of those tunes that played over and over again in your brain.
A new type of trading card came out this year, and I’d scour the town for empty soda bottles so I could get enough deposit money to buy them. The Civil War News cards were out, helping celebrate another centennial year of the War Between the States. Just like baseball cards packed with gum, except these cards depicted famous battles and other events in a lurid comic book style that just thrilled me to death. The back of each one was printed with details of the event or person portrayed on the card, and I spent all summer trying to collect each and every one.
There isn’t much to hear about Cuba lately, and let’s hope it stays that way. As a matter of fact, the only thing Cuban in the news is about the two new players on the Phillies, Tony Taylor and Tony Gonzales. They, along with Johnny Callison, are finally giving Phillies fans something to cheer about. The Phils finish seventh due to the talents of these younger players, and the fact that the National League has expanded to ten teams. The New York Mets play horribly, finishing last, and the other new team, the Houston Colt 45s coming in ninth. Even the Cubs play poorly, so the Phillies climb out of the cellar, and Dad and the neighbors pay more attention to the games on the radio as they play Pinochle in the shade of the old maple tree.
Paul Avis comes by with a new comic book. It’s one of those Marvel ones, an anthology series that has changed its title. The book had been called “Amazing Adult Fantasy”, but this month it’s just “Amazing Fantasy”, and on the cover is a character in a suit that looks like a spider web. Inside the pages of this comic is a story that captures our imagination. Peter Parker is a high school student, not much older than me, and he’s bitten by a radioactive spider, granting him all the powers of a spider magnified a thousand fold. Peter Parker uses his new powers to become a professional wrestler, and decides he will go into show business. A superhero who is a teenager, and who is a nerd in real life! This comic is good, really good, and I try to get Paul to trade it to me, but he won’t budge. This is an anthology series, so maybe this Spiderman character will never show up again. I’ll keep trying to get Paul to trade it.
As Labor Day approaches, I head over to school to take a look at the class postings on the front doors. I’ll have Mrs. Nolte for the Fifth Grade this year. She’s supposed to be a good teacher and a nice lady, so I’m pleased by that. All but two names on my class list are familiar to me. There’s a Stephen Kay and a Susan Burns on the list. I wonder what they’ll be like?
Just like everyone else, I’ll have to go shopping for school clothes in Woodbury and a trip to Ernie’s Shoe Post over on Route 45.
Summer will end with a cookout and standing around the barbecue grill one last time roasting marshmallows over the coals, wondering what the new school year will bring.
That last night of freedom,reluctantly answering our parents’ calls, the official sound of summer's end:
“Time to come in now. Time to get ready for school.”

On A Warm Day In August

2008-11-01T09:49:00.007-04:00

It’s a Friday, the 17th of August, a warm and humid day. It’s muggy in South Jersey, one of those days when nothing seems to move. What shall we do today? It’s awfully hot, isn’t it?

Over in East Berlin two young men have decided what they will do today. They have decided to escape into West Berlin by making a dash across the dead zone and climbing over the six foot wall to freedom.
Helmut Kulbeik and his friend, eighteen year old Peter Fechter believe they’ve found a weak spot in the Berlin wall. They are construction workers working close to the wall and they’ve spotted an area where they think the guards won’t be able to see them crossing.
The night before they sleep in a carpenter’s shed. Their plan is simple; jump from the window into the dead zone, make a run to the wall and climb over before anyone notices.
In the morning they watch as the guards make their rounds. When all looks clear they jump and begin their escape. Helmut reaches the wall and climbs over into the West and freedom.
Just as Peter begins climbing, he is spotted by the guards and is fired upon. He is hit in the pelvis and falls backwards into the dead zone, where he lies in full view of the guards on both sides of the wall.
He screams out for help, but no one moves.
The American soldiers are ordered not to do anything, and the East German guards fear that if they do anything they will be shot at by the Americans.
West Germans begin gathering at the wall. They want to help Peter Fechter, but guns are pointed at them. All anyone does is watch, while journalists take pictures.When a German reporter asks American soldiers why they do not help Peter Fechter, one GI replies: "This is not our problem."
Peter Fechter slowly bleeds to death, crying out for help, and in an hour his life is over. The West Germans do the only thing they can. They scream and throw rocks at the East German guards and hurl insults at the American soldiers. They riot and fight with their own police, venting their frustrations.

It’s a hot and muggy day today, this Friday in August in South Jersey in 1962.
Awfully hot.
What do you think we should do?

Homecoming

2008-10-30T19:23:00.002-04:00

My new little sister's name is Cheryl Ann. Where does that name come from? I find out that it's my Dad's idea. There was a TV show called "Waterfront" that came on between 1954 and 1956 starring Preston Foster as a tugboat captain in Los Angeles. I guess it made an impression on Dad; I don't seem to remember the show much at all. Anyway, he names my sister after a tugboat on a TV show - Cheryl Ann. Mom wanted to call her Cheryl August as a compromise, but Dad wins this one.
When I get home from the farm I find my sister in her crib in my bedroom. I'm assured by Mom that it's only temporary, and Cheryl will sleep in their room at night. She's a baby, so I won't have much to do with her right now.
My aunts and uncles and neighbors file in and out, oohing and aahing their approval. Carl and I find ourselves making baby-talk noises to her, and she laughs back at us.
I guess she'll be crawling around the house before we know it, and then she'll be zooming around in one of those wheeled things with a canvas seat, crashing into the walls and the furniture.
My sister is small and we call her "Pebbles" like in the Flintstones.
There's five of us in this small house now, six if you're counting Whee-Zee, and we are.
Whee-Zee knows there's someone helpless in the family.
She may be old and tired and not as fast anymore, but she knows her duty.
She takes up her post on the floor underneath my sister's crib, ready to protect another young life.
Another one of the family.

I'm Walkin'

2008-10-26T10:19:00.001-04:00

I was angry and nervous and upset, and now my intestines had seized up like they were filled with cement. I couldn’t go to the bathroom no matter how much I tried. That’s all I need, one more thing to worry about.
Tuesday would be just as hot, just as humid as Monday, and the day would pass by in slow motion. I took a walk into the fields with Snowy. I pet Ruby and Spade while I fed them apples. Horses just stand there all day in the heat, snorting and flicking their tails at the flies.
At least the hunting dogs are in the shade all day, and they clamor for attention as I walk by. Ruby and Spade follow me, looking for more apples, but they get wise and head back to the water trough.
The steers are huddled together like they always are, looking at me with suspicious eyes. They’re always afraid. I wonder if they know that soon they will be sent to the slaughterhouse, ending up as steaks and hamburgers on somebody’s barbecue grill. Some of them even have names, which is kinda sad really. How can you give an animal a name while all the time you’re just planning on killing it? A few are brave enough to let me approach them and rub their heads and scratch them behind the ears, and they press their big wet noses on me in appreciation. As soon as I make a sudden move they scatter, just as scared, just as timid as always.
The day drags on and then it’s evening, and I try to get to sleep, but I’m uncomfortable and irritated because I’m all stopped up. The one bathroom in the house is on the first floor at the bottom of that long steep staircase, increasing the level of my anxiety. Maybe Wednesday will be better.
Things aren’t better. It’s hot again and I just can’t take the boredom anymore. I try to convince Charlie into going out to the woods and playing army or cowboys and Indians, or getting out his toy trucks and tractors, but he isn’t interested. His Cousin Marvin comes over and he’s all attitude. He makes fun of all of my ideas about what to do today. He calls me a sissy for wanting to play with toy soldiers or pretending to be a cowboy, and it feels like all he wants to do is pick a fight with me. I try to ignore him, but he won’t let up and he won’t go away. It’s getting hotter and so is my temper, but I don’t want to fight, I just want to do something other than stand around in this heat.
Marvin continues to make fun of me, and I make up my mind to just ignore him, but he won’t let up, and then the unexpected happens. Charlie is laughing at what Marvin is saying about me, and at my pathetic attempts at defending myself. What is this? My favorite cousin, my almost brother is laughing along with Marvin and his insults. That’s it. That’s all I can stand. My brain is reeling. I’m incensed. I’m tired and angry and I’m constipated and I’m bored, and I DON’T WANT TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!!
No more poop and heat and flies. No more horrible smells. No more dust, and now Charlie is laughing at me. I WANT TO GO HOME AND I WANT TO GO HOME NOW!
I turn away from Charlie and Marvin and Carl. I begin walking down Cohawkin Road. I know the way and I’m determined to get away from here. Up Cohawkin Road to King’s Highway and straight into Woodbury. I can go to Nanny and Pop-Pop’s house or Aunt Sis’s house, and somebody will give me a ride home. I can do it, I know I can; didn’t Mom and I walk all over town? Heck, I walked to Woodbury and back when I was a little kid, so I know I can walk home now. Walking is easy. It’s one foot in front of the other and before you know it, you’re home.
I hear Charlie calling for me to come back, and I hear Carl crying. Aunt Bette is at the end of the driveway calling for me, and soon Charlie is in front of me on his bike, apologizing and begging me to come back. I don’t want to, but I turn around and go back to the farm. Everybody is upset, and the rest of the day is like being in some weird state of suspended animation.
That evening some phone calls are made. Aunt Bette tells me and Carl that Mom and our new sister will be coming home on Thursday and that Dad will come and get us on Friday, one day earlier than was planned.
I can’t wait, but I’ll just have to be patient. I need to go home and see Whee-Zee and sleep in my own room where the bathroom is right next door. I gotta go swimming and see my friends and neighbors-even Mark Gerber would be a welcome sight right now. One more day and Dad will come and take us home.
Thursday can’t go by quick enough. It’s raining, and the temperature is cooling off, and we’re stuck in the house for most of the day, but that’s alright, ‘cause tomorrow we’re going home!
Just before noon on Friday Dad arrives and we say good-bye to Aunt Bette and Charlie. Charlie and I have patched things up, and I still love the farm and all, but I’ve had enough of it for a while, and I can’t wait to leave.
I begin to relax on the way home. Things are gonna be OK now, especially if I can finally go to the bathroom. Home. Back with Mom and Dad and Whee-Zee and all our neighbors. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, we’ve got a little sister, too.
“What’s her name, Dad?” I don’t remember anyone telling us yet.
“We named her Cheryl,” he says. “Your sister’s name is Cheryl Ann.”
“Cheryl Ann, huh?” I wonder where they got that name? We don’t have anybody else named that in the family. I’ll have to ask Mom how she came up with that one.
Hey everybody,there’s a new kid in town.

Homesick

2008-10-23T16:44:00.001-04:00

Monday morning arrived hotter and even more humid. I awake before Carl and Charlie, peering out from under the tent towards the house. It must be after seven, because Uncle Everett is getting into his truck and going to work. We won’t have to face him until supper.
All male adults are intimidating, but Uncle Everett even more so. I don’t see my dad much because he’s at work a lot, but when he’s home he does laugh and relax sometimes. Uncle Everett never relaxes. I hardly ever see him laugh. He’s got a cabinet full of rifles, and every fall he goes out to the “deer woods” and hunts. Uncle Everett is somebody who actually goes out and kills animals in the woods, and runs farm equipment. He rode horses in rodeos and works non-stop. He’s just not a laid-back guy, and to a 10 year old, he can be pretty scary, so I walk softly around him and do as I’m told.
Aunt Bette scolds us about the fire at breakfast, and gives us Uncle Everett’s list of chores. Not much more than what we’ve been doing, so I guess he’s not as mad at us as I thought. I guess we’re off the hook.
The temperature climbs into the nineties, so we take it easy after the chores are done. The fields are dry and dusty, and the farm smells rise with the temperature. The odors and the flies are starting to get to me, and I think more and more about home and Woodbury Heights.
There’s no Trackie’s or 7-11, or any store nearby. Cohawkin road has no sidewalks, it’s rural, and it’s not lined with trees. My Cousin Charlie has no friends close by, just his other cousins, so we don’t have enough kids for a game of baseball or kickball, and the only place to ride bikes is in the fields. Heat, flies, dust and poop of all kinds, and now it’s just plain boring.
I realize that Charlie is a lot different now than just a few years ago. Must be from all the work he has to do and the isolation he lives in. He doesn’t seem to have much of an imagination like I do, and he seems uninterested in toys, even the ones he has.
He does come up with an idea.
“How’s about I teach you how to drive the flatbed truck out in the fields?” he asks.
This sounds like an adventure, so of course I say yes.
Charlie and Carl and I pile into the truck and head out into the fields. When we’re far enough from the house he tells me to get into the driver’s seat.
I do OK for a while. Driving on a straight dirt road at about twenty miles an hour is pretty easy, even though I’m kinda small and can’t see too well over the steering wheel. The steering wheel is huge in my hands, and I can barely reach the pedals. When we come up to one of the gates I forget to hit the clutch or something, and the truck rolls into the fencepost, bending it and part of the gate. In my mind’s eye I blow it all out of proportion. I see a tangled mass of destruction, when in reality it’s just a little dent in the iron gate, and the post can be pulled back up and straightened with some wire. I’m shaking, thinking this is it, Uncle Everett will have my head and mount it on the wall like one of the deer he shot – a trophy: “Yeah, had to shoot the boy, he was too damn dumb for his own good.”
Charlie just laughs the whole thing off, and the three of us put things back in order. As we pull away and head to the house I keep looking back at that gate, and it mocks me and it just doesn’t look the same, and I know for sure that Uncle Everett will know that something happened to it. Charlie tells me that it looks like one of the steers banged into it, so don’t worry. But I will worry, I can’t help it, that’s me.
I’m all shook up, and I can’t relax the rest of the day. When Uncle Everett gets home he makes his usual rounds in the fields. My heart pounds in my head, and I know he’ll come back and ask what happened to the fence. I’m lucky, I guess. He says nothing at the dinner table, and I’m relieved. Charlie was right, we covered our tracks pretty good, no one will ever know.
It will be a really hot night, and the bedrooms are all upstairs, so it’s even warmer up there. I miss my old maple tree, and I miss the lake and the coolness of the woods and the moss on Freund’s cliff. I like coming to the farm. I love Aunt Bette and Charlie, and even though I’m a little scared of Uncle Everett, he’s really an OK guy, but I want to go home. I don’t like the smells, and I don’t like the flies, and I miss my Mom and Dad and Whee-Zee. I want to get on my bike and soar down Chestnut Hill and play war with Paul LaPann and the others, but it’s only Monday night, and I’ve got to be here till Saturday.
What’s worse, even though I’m surrounded by it, it’s the one thing I can’t seem to do anymore: poop.

Ring Of Fire

2008-10-16T17:12:00.005-04:00

We waited for evening to fall. With the daylight fading, we began to start our campfire. Some brush and dry twigs at first, and when it started to blaze, all three of us tossed branches and larger limbs onto the flames. It wasn’t quite big enough, so Carl and Charlie and I gathered more and more fuel. Small logs, large limbs, chunks of bark, and dry hay from the field, even a cow pie or two. The fire grew in intensity, and the flames climbed higher and higher into the growing darkness.
I don’t know what it was, but we had become entranced by the orange-yellow glow, and we continued to pile more and more wood onto the campfire. The flames were getting closer to the lowest branches of the trees around us, and we just cried, “More wood!”, “More wood!”
We were dancing around the fire and yelling like the Indians we’d seen in the movies, or like the African natives in all the Tarzan pictures. Three wild boys who could not be tamed. We whirled and screamed and danced and tossed more and more wood, until the heat and the glow resembled a blast furnace.
We were howling and the dogs were howling. It was primitive, and we were intoxicated; entranced by the flames and the heat and the glow. Dancing and yelling, dancing and yelling, and the outside world no longer existed. The cave men couldn’t have been more primeval. We were Lords of the Flies without knowing, an island of savages unto ourselves. Nothing could disturb our reverie.

Except.....

A pair of headlights was bearing down on us, coming from the direction of the house. The three of us stopped in our tracks and watched as they drew near. It was Uncle Everett roaring across the field in the old flatbed truck, heading straight for us and our campfire.
“What in the hell do you boys think you’re doing?!!!!,” he yelled. What are you trying to do, burn the whole damn place down?”
You knew adults were really angry when the four letter words started coming out. They shook us into reality.
“Now, you get this fire under control.” Don’t you put anymore wood on it and keep an eye on it before you all try going to sleep.” I’ll be watching from the house to make sure.”
“Jesus Christ,” he cried. “You boys are old enough to know better.”
And then he roared off.
So the three of us composed ourselves and kept watch as the flames slowly died down, Uncle Everett’s words echoing in our ears, each of us wondering what he may have in store for us tomorrow. Snowy and Speck calmed down, watching the fire with us.
When it was just a mass of glowing embers we threw some dirt on it and took a last look towards the house in the distance, making sure that the lights were out and hoping that Uncle Everett was fast asleep.
We piled into the tent, a tangle of boys and dogs squirming and fussing, each one trying to find that perfect spot, that comfortable place that would bring on much needed sleep.
It took us a while to get settled. We had been savages after all. Primitive men that could not be tamed-Keepers of the fire.
We slept with smiles on our faces and flames in our hearts.
Wild Things, not young boys, accompanied by wolves, not dogs.
Wild Things, that's what we were.
Yeah......Wild Things.
At least until tomorrow.

Sunday On The Farm

2008-10-13T22:14:00.001-04:00

Sunday morning was hotter and even more humid. We listened to Uncle Everett tell us what chores to do as we crunched our puffed rice cereal. We’ll have to feed and water the animals, comb the horses, clean out the dog pen, and muck out some of the stalls in the barn. It shouldn’t take too long with the three of us-uh, make that two of us. When it comes to chores, Carl is best at not doing them, so it’s up to Charlie and me to get them done.
As I eat my cereal, my cousin Charlie is having coffee. Coffee!? A ten-year old needs coffee? Gack! That crap is vile. How can Charlie drink it? It’s milk, mostly, but I don’t see the point of ever drinking it. That stuff is for adults and not for me.
The temperature is climbing, so we’d better get busy. Feeding the animals is easy, scraping up dog poop from a concrete pad isn’t fun, but doesn’t take too long. Combing the horses is a piece of cake. Mucking out the barn is another story, and if I had my choice, I’d rather not do it. We’re covered in hay and flies and poop by the time we’re through, and the stench of manure and animal musk has perfumed our bodies with a horrible funk. Time for showers and lunch. My brother is pretty clean; he conned his way into helping Aunt Bette pick vegetables from the garden.
You know, I’ve stayed overnight on the farm before, but the longer you’re here you notice that the smell of manure and moldy hay lingers on, and just gets worse as it gets hotter. The well water has a peculiar aroma all its own, and it mixes with the other odors, and I never feel clean. Everything smells “funny” including me, and I can’t get used to it.
It’s hotter here as well. Out in the fields it’s brutal, and the only shady spots are under the apple tree where the dog pen is, the few trees by the house, and the woods a long walk away. We could drive the flat bed truck out to the small pond, but it’s not very deep this time of year, and besides, it’s crawling with waterbugs.
After lunch the day is ours to do whatever we want. We’ll be sleeping out in the woods tonight, so later on we’ll begin setting up our campsite.
There’s a few mysteries on the farm. I already said that I’d never really seen Uncle Everett ride his horses. He’s got saddles, I know, I’ve seen them, but Ruby and Spade just roam the fields all day; no one ever rides them. I don’t get it. What’s the point of having horses if you’re not going to ride? I never get an answer.
Mr. Harbison is another mystery. He’s a man who rents rooms upstairs from Aunt Bette. All I’ve ever seen of him is the back of his head as he drives away in his old gray Chevrolet, and even that is rare. Maybe he’s a secret agent like that new James Bond guy in the movies. Maybe he’s an ex-Nazi scientist working for the CIA on a secret formula or something. All I know is that he comes and goes through the side door without being seen or heard, year after year.
There’s a stone well-house next to the main house, and I’ve never seen the door open once, not ever. The windows have paint on them, so it’s hard to see inside. The well-house would make a great pillbox from which to repel enemy soldiers, but it seems to be off-limits to everybody. What’s in there, I wonder?
Mrs. Poole, Uncle Everett’s mother, lives in one of those roundish silver-gray trailer homes next to one of the barns. She’s a lot like my grand mom Woodward; not very friendly, especially towards children. I stay away from her, which isn’t too difficult, ‘cause she hardly ever comes outside.
Uncle Everett’s brother and sister have houses next to his, so Charlie always has cousins around.
Right next door is his cousin Freddy. Freddy is a big kid, no, let’s face it, he’s really fat, and slightly older than me. Freddy has a great big Saint Bernard dog named King that they keep penned up. King is kept in a pen so he doesn’t run out onto Cohawkin Road and get killed. He’s a little unruly, a lot like Freddy. I feel sorry for King, it doesn’t seem right for any dog to be locked up with so much space to run in.
Next to Freddy is Uncle Everett’s brother and he has three kids, Terri, Tina and Marvin. Terri is the oldest and blond and kind of pretty. It’s easy to have a crush on her. Marvin is about a year older than me and Charlie, and he’s got an attitude problem. He kind of reminds me of Bradley Lloyd when Bradley was always trying to pick a fight with me. What’s Marvin’s problem, anyway? Tina is the youngest and always smiling. She spends a lot of time keeping Carl company.
We spend the afternoon trying to keep cool the best we can, in anticipation of the evening ahead.
After supper we gather up the tent and our blankets. Carl, Charlie and I and the dogs head down the field and into the woods where we pick out a spot to pitch the tent and build a fire.
With the tent set up and our firewood gathered, we wait for night to fall.